Carlos Fraenkel

Carlos Fraenkel (born March 21, 1971 in Münster, Germany) is a German-Brazilian scholar and writer currently living in Canada. He is James McGill Professor of Philosophy and Religion at McGill University in Montreal and was previously Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Oxford University.

Fraenkel has written several books and is a contributor at the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Times, the Nation, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Jewish Review of Books, Boston Review, and Dissent Magazine. Fraenkel’s work spans ancient, medieval and early modern philosophy, Jewish and Islamic thought, and political philosophy. His research interests include the philosophies of Plato, Themistius, al-Fārābī, al-Ghazālī, Maimonides and Spinoza, and on conducting philosophical discussions in places of conflict with Palestinian students, lapsed Hasidic Jews, and members of a Native American community. He has also contributed to the philosophical discussion of religious and cultural conflict.

Background and early life

Fraenkel’s parents moved to Germany in 1970 as political refugees from the military dictatorship in Brazil. His paternal grandparents were German Jews who fled Nazi Germany and settled in São Paulo. His maternal grandfather is Joaquim Câmara Ferreira, a leader of Brazil’s Communist Party, and, in the 1960s, of the armed resistance against Brazil’s military dictatorship. Fraenkel wrote his Ph.D. (summa cum laude, 2000) at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Main publications

• From Maimonides to Samuel ibn Tibbon: The Transformation of the Dalālat al-Ḥāʾirīn into the Moreh ha-Nevukhim (Hebrew), The Hebrew University Magnes Press, Jerusalem 2007, ISBN 978-965-493-300-1.
• Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza: Reason, Religion, and Autonomy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2012, ISBN 978-1-139-85104-6.
• Teaching Plato in Palestine: Philosophy in a Divided World. Princeton University Press, Princeton 2015, ISBN 978-1-4008-6579-6.

Awards and honors

• Sheikh Zayed Book Award in Arabic Culture in Other Languages 2016 (Finalist)
• Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction 2015
• William Dawson Scholarship for Outstanding Young Professors 2004-14
• Shlomo-Pines-Prize for Outstanding Young Scholars 1999

Academic fellowships

Fraenkel has held visiting professorships at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, the State Islamic University in Makassar (Indonesia), and elsewhere. He was awarded research fellowships from, among others, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the German Humboldt Foundation, and the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin