Prof. Dr. Iddo Dickmann (狄一多)

Associate Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies, Nanjing University

School of Philosophy and Religion, NJU

The Diane and Guilford Glazer Institute for Jewish and Israel Studies, NJU

Area of specialization: Continental Philosophy, Jewish Philosophy, Rabbinic Literature, Aesthetics

Email: [email protected]; [email protected] 

Address: Department of Philosophy, Xue Guanglin Building, Room 424. Xianlin Campus, Nanjing, 210023

Educational background

PhD Bar-Ilan University

MA Hebrew University of Jerusalem

BA Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Personal profile

I joined the Department in 2021, having previously taught and conducted research at the University of Colorado Boulder, Penn-State University, Cambridge University, The Catholic University of Louvain, and Vilnius University. Israeli born, my degrees are from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Bar-Ilan University, and I am a graduate of Har-Etzion Talmudic College. My areas of specialization are Continental Philosophy (especially contemporary French Thought), and Jewish Philosophy (especially Rabbinic). My publications include, among other things, a monograph with SUNY Press entitled The Little Crystalline Seed: The Ontological Significance of Mise en abyme in Post-Heideggerian Thought (SUNY Press)

Research interests

In my monograph and subsequent publications, I have argued that Deleuze, Blanchot, Derrida, Levinas, Foucault and Bergson, with Kant, Leibniz and Heidegger as precursors, invoked the concept of mise en ebyme, or aesthetic self-reference, from Poetics, to use it as a paradigm shift in Philosophy. My research into Rabbinic phenomenology shows it to invoke types of mises en abyme known to neither Poetics nor Philosophy. I currently direct a research-project entitled “Interdisciplinary Investigation into Structures of Self-Reference,” funded by the Humanities and Social Science Fund of Ministry of Education of China (2024-2028). It explores paradoxes of self-reference from a Continental Philosophy point of view, and their application to Biosemiotics, Cognitive Sciences (especially body cognition), and Complex Theory

Publications

Monographs

· Dickmann, I. (2019) The Little Crystalline Seed: The Ontological Significance of Mise en abyme in Post-Heideggerian Thought. New York: State University of New York Press. SUNY Series: “Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory”, edited by Rodolph Gasché.

Papers in international refereed journals

· Dickmann, I. (2015) “’The Book as Assemblage with the Outside’ – The Rhizomatic Book as a Radical Case of Open Work.” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 46(1): 16-32

· Dickmann, I. (2017) “Using Mise en abyme to Differentiate Deleuze and Derrida.” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 48(1):63-80

· Dickmann, I. (2018) “The Sefer as a Challenge to Reception Theories.” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 26 (1): 67-93

· Dickmann, I. (2018) “’Infinite Responsibility’ and the Pitfall of Negation: A Deleuzian Critique of Levinas”. Philosophy Today, 62(3): 765-783

· Dickmann, I. (2019) “The Gift of Get: A Derridean Reading of Tractate Gittin”. The Heythrop Journal, 61: 903-912

· Dickmann, I. (2023) “Infames, Roman Judicial Theatre, and the Mimesis of Process”. Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy, 24: 306-327

· Dickmann, I. (2023) “Double-Mirror Gaze, Transcoded Testimony, and Disqualified Witnesses in the Talmud”. Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 31: 127-162

· Dickmann, I. (2023) “Tractate Shabbat and the Phenomenology of Play”. Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, 99: 487-516

· Dickmann, I. (2025) “Nth Power Lottery and Mimesis of the Future in Yom Kippur’s Ceremonial Law, Hasidic Thought and Early-Modern Folklore”. The Heythrop Journal: 66: 275-298.

· Dickmann, I. (accepted 23 July 2025, pending minor revisions) “Naskh as a Challenge to Historicity”, Sophia.

Chapters in edited collections

· Dickmann, I. (2016) “Mise en abyme and Levinas’s ‘Infinite Responsibility’” in Emmanuel Levinas: a Radical Thinker in the Time of Crisis, R. Serpytye (ed.), Vilnius University Press, 131-138

Edited collections

· Sep. 2025- present. Special Issue Editor “Jewish Thought in Light of Deleuze and Guattari Studies” (forthcoming), Religions journal (A&HCI)

Courses:

Graduate:

- Introduction to Jewish Philosophy

- Introduction to Rabbinic Thought and Literature

Undergraduate:

- French Thought: From Existentialism to Post-Structuralism