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Kevin Aho is a Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Communication
and Philosophy at Florida Gulf Coast University, USA. He has published widely in the
areas of existentialism, applied hermeneutics and phenomenology, and phenomenological
psychopathology. He is the author of A Phenomenology of Functional Neurological Disorder:
Body, Self, World (2026), One Beat More: Existentialism and the Gift of Mortality
(2022), Existentialism: An Introduction (2014; 2nd ed. 2020), Contexts of Suffering:
A Heideggerian Approach to Psychopathology (2019), Heidegger’s Neglect of the Body
(2009), and Body Matters: A Phenomenology of Sickness, Illness, and Disease, with
James Aho (2008). He is also editor of Existential Medicine: Essays on Health and
Illness (2018) and co‑editor of The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Existentialism
(2024), and Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground (2009).
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Education
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- Ph.D. Philosophy, University of South Florida
- M.A. Philosophy, University of Utah
- B.A. Philosophy, Idaho State University
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Specialties
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- Existentialism
- Phenomenology
- Philosophy of Health and Illness
- Medical Humanities
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Courses Offered
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- PHP 3786 Existentialism
- PHM 3101 Philosophies of Liberation
- PHI 3223 Philosophy of Human Communication
- PHI 3456 Philosophy of Health and Illness
- PHI 4938 Capstone Seminar in Philosophy
- PHP 4930 Major Figures in Philosophy
- PHI 3930 Special Topics in Philosophy
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Publications
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Selected publications:
- One Beat More: Existentialism and the Gift of Mortality
- Contexts of Suffering: A Heideggerian Approach to Psychopathology (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019)
- Existential Medicine: Essays on Health and Illness, K. Aho (ed.) (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018)
- Existentialism: An Introduction (Polity, 2014)
- Heidegger’s Neglect of the Body (SUNY Press, 2010)
- Body Matters: A Phenomenology of Sickness, Disease, and Illness, with James Aho (Lexington Books, 2009)
- Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground, K. Aho and C. Guignon (eds.) (Hackett, 2009)
- Recent Articles and Chapters
- “’We’re protecting them to death’—A Heideggerian Interpretation of Loneliness among
Older Adults in Long-Term Care Facilities during COVID-19,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2022
- “Ek-sistenz,” The Cambridge Heidegger Lexicon, M. Wrathall (ed.) (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2022)
- “The Uncanny in the Time of Pandemics: Heideggerian Reflections on the Coronavirus,”
Gatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual, Vol. 10, 2020. Reprinted in Existential Analysis Vol. 32(1), 2021.
- “Gadamer and Health,” The Gadamerian Mind, T. George and G-J van der Heiden (eds.) (London: Routledge, 2021)
- “The Contraction of Time and Existential Awakening: A Phenomenology of Authentic Aging,”
The Evening of Life: The Challenges of Aging and Dying Well, J. Davis (ed.) (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2020)
- “Heidegger on melancholia, deep boredom, and the inability-to-be,” Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, Vol. 27(3), 2020
- “Notes from a Heart Attack: A Phenomenology of an Altered Body,” Phenomenology of a Broken Body, E. Dahl, C. Falke, and E. Erikson (eds.) (Routledge, 2019)
- "Dostoevsky, Existential Therapy, and Modern Rage: On the Possibility of Counseling
the Underground Man." Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 2019.
- Authenticity and Social Critique,” with Charles Guignon, The Cambridge Companion of Philosophy, 1945-2015, K. Becker and I. Thomson (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2019)
- “Temporal Experience in Anxiety: Embodiment, Selfhood, and the Collapse of Meaning,”
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2018.
- “Affectivity and its Disorders,” Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology, G. Stanghellini, M. Broome, P. Fusar-Poli, A. Raballo, R. Rosfort, and A. Fernandez
(eds.) (Oxford University Press, 2018).
- Neurasthenia Revisited: On Medically Unexplained Syndromes and the Value of Hermeneutic
Medicine,” Journal of Applied Hermeneutics, 2018.
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