Dr. Peterson works primarily in the areas of environmental philosophy and Continental (European) philosophy from Kant to the present, actively teaching and researching in both areas. Courses offered at Colby in recent years have included Constructions of Difference (PL117), Environmental Ethics (PL/ES243), Philosophy of Nature (PL/STS/ES 216), Vegan Studies: Animals, Politics, Environment, and Health (PL244), Freedom, Resentment, and the Other (PL240), Feminism and Science (PL/WGSS 217), Radical Ecologies (PL/STS/ES328), Being, Difference, and Power (PL378), Recent Continental Realisms (PL380A) and Material Ethics (PL380B).
He has published articles in the journals Ethics & The Environment, Environmental Philosophy, Cosmos and History, Capitalism Nature Socialism, Axiomathes, Culture and Values, and Journal for the British Society of Phenomenology, among others, as well as book chapters and translations of late 18th and early 20th century German philosophical works. He has presented his work in numerous professional venues, including meetings of the Nicolai Hartmann Society, International Association for Environmental Philosophy, International Society for Environmental Ethics, Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, and Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences.
He served as co-Chair of the Society for Ecofeminism, Environmental Justice, and Social Ecology from 2005 to 2013. He is on the Advisory Board of the International Nicolai Hartmann Society (http://nicolaihartmannsociety.org/), and served as its President for five years.
His monograph entitled A World not Made for Us: Topics in Critical Environmental Philosophy, SUNY series in Environmental Philosophy and Ethics, was published in 2020. His translation, with introduction and notes, of Nicolai Hartmann’s Ontology: Laying the Foundations, was published by De Gruyter in 2019. (See “Books” entry at the right for more details.) He is currently working on a book-length philosophical treatment of total liberation veganism as well as a book project introducing the philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann to a general philosophical audience.
Known by students as “KP,” he is a vegan political ecologist and avid amateur road cyclist.
