Ionut Moise

Spalding-Teape Fellow Ionut Moise’s current research project focuses on metaphysics in Western and Indian scholasticism.

Ionut works on a project on the History of Philosophy pertaining to the reception and interpretation of the category ‘differentia’ in several philosophical traditions (Indian, Byzantine, and Latin scholastic, as well as Islamic and Syriac). Before Clare Hall, he taught Indian Philosophy, Reception History, Religious Studies, and Theology at the University of Exeter, where he holds a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. He has also taught Comparative Philosophy in relation to the Aarhus University-OCHS visiting student programme at Oxford. Ionut’s current research area interests are Indian and Classical Greek ontology, scholastic philosophy (Boethius, Duns Scotus), Continental Philosophy (Gilles Deleuze, Albert Camus), Comparative Metaphysics and Sanskrit philology.

Holding a doctorate in Indian Philosophy (Vaiśeṣika) from the University of Oxford (2012-2018) led to the publication of Ionut’s first monograph: Salvation in Indian Philosophy (Routledge 2019) which offers a comprehensive outline on ‘salvation’ (niḥśreyasa) in Vaiśeṣika system, as well as a succinct overview of comparable classical theories of salvation in related Indian philosophical systems. Prior to Oxford, Ionut studied Classics, patristics and religious studies in Bucharest, Strasbourg, and at Cambridge (IOCS).

While he esteems the importance and necessity of philology and textual criticism in philosophy, Ionut’s method is synchronic. More recently he has developed, in the vein of Wilhelm Halbfass (Indologist and philosopher), an innovative course on Comparative Philosophy which he sometimes teaches at OCHS, Oxford. This may represent the material of a forthcoming book.