Paul A. Kottman

Paul A. Kottman (born 1970) is a comparatist, philosopher, and literary critic. He is Professor of Comparative Literature at the New School for Social Research in New York City, where he is Chair of the Committee on Liberal Studies, co-directs the Institute for Philosophy and the New Humanities, and is affiliated with the Philosophy Department.

Kottman is known for his 2017 book Love as Human Freedom. Rather than see love as a natural form of affection, Kottman sees love as a practice that changes over time through which new social realities are brought into being—including the rise of feminism and the emergence of bourgeois family life, the struggles for abortion rights and birth control and the erosion of a gender-based division of labor.

Kottman is also known for his philosophical readings of Shakespeare, and Shakespearean tragedy, in various essays and in his book Tragic Conditions in Shakespeare]. According to Kottman, "Shakespearean tragedy works through the loss of any 'given' — nature, or God, or “fate” — that might explain human societies, histories, actions, destinies, relationships and values. At the same time, Shakespearean tragedy works through the loss of social bonds on which we depend for the meaning and worth of our lives together — showing those bonds to be, in spite of that dependence, fully dissolvable. "