

McGuinn 224
Telephone: 617-552-4096
Email: hannes.kerber@bc.edu
Modern Political Theory
T TH 3-4pm (and by appointment)
Hannes Kerber is Assistant Professor of Political Philosophy at Boston College, where his research and teaching focus on 17th- and 18th-century political thought. Before joining Boston College in 2024, he served as Academic Program Director at the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung in Munich and lectured in philosophy and religious studies at the University of Munich. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University in 2022–2023 and a visiting professor at the Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia in 2024. In 2025–2026 he is a Faculty Affiliate of the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Government.
His first book, Die Aufklärung der Aufklärung: Lessing und die Herausforderung des Christentums (Wallstein Verlag, second edition, 2025), received the inaugural Chodowiecki Prize from the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies in Halle-Wittenberg. His edited volumes include Leo Strauss on Plato’s “Euthyphro”: The 1948 Notebook, with Lectures and Critical Writings (2023), Die Praktiken der Provokation: Lessings Schreib- und Streitstrategien (2024), Lessing's Legacy (forthcoming in 2025), and Leo Strauss: La dottrina essoterica (forthcoming in 2025). He is co-editor of the book series Politische Philosophie / Political Philosophy (Klostermann Verlag).
Praktiken der Provokation: Lessings Schreib- und Streitstrategien (Practices of Provocation: Lessing’s Literary and Polemical Strategies), co-edited with Magdalena Fricke and Eleonora Travanti (Wehrhahn Verlag, 2024).
Leo Strauss on Plato’s “Euthyphro”: The 1948 Notebook, with Lectures and Critical Writings, co-edited with Svetozar Y. Minkov (Penn State University Press, 2023. Paperback 2024).
“Jerusalem and Athens in America: On the Biographical Background of Leo Strauss’s Four Eponymous Lectures from 1946, 1950, and 1967, And an Abandoned Book Project from 1956/1957.” Journal for the History of Modern Theology / Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte 29 (1) (2022): 90–132.
Die Aufklärung der Aufklärung: Lessing und die Herausforderung des Christentums (The Enlightenment of the Enlightenment: Lessing and the Challenge of Christianity). (Wallstein Verlag, 2021. 2nd edition, 2024, forthcoming).