Todd specialises in philosophical hermeneutics (primarily Heidegger and Ricoeur) and its wider application to areas such as economics, work, and belief. His most recent research examines the phenomenological significance of land and its impact upon economic policy, which has been published in a monograph Land and the Given Economy: The Hermeneutics and Phenomenology of Dwelling (Northwestern UP, 2017).
Other interests include: understanding the notion of ‘meaningful work’ according to analogies to discourse and metaphor; and developing a hermeneutical theory of truth from the work of Paul Ricoeur, with a special focus on beliefs that are not typically considered epistemological—e.g. convictions.
Todd is President of the Society for Ricoeur Studies and an Editorial Board Member for the journal Études Ricoeuriennes/Ricoeur Studies.
Meaningful Work Project
The topic of meaningful work concerns questions about what makes work meaningful and whether it has an important role to play in the flourishing of the individual and society. It is an interdisciplinary concept that is pursued by philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, political theorists and business ethicists. A perennial question within the philosophy of work is whether the State has any duty to provide meaningful work for its citizens. While this may see a reasonable expectation, critics allege that work is a matter of individual preference and so cannot be mandated.
Todd’s research uses hermeneutics, speech act theory, political economy, and virtue ethics to elucidate various dimensions involved in meaningful work. While his theoretical investigations focus on understanding meaning in work as a form of linguistic predication, he has wider interests in helping businesses and institutions to think about how to identify what is meaningful about their structures and processes and how to make improvements in view of employee and corporate flourishing.
Todd has been invited to speak at conferences on work aimed at HR officers interested in the question of meaningful work. As well, he continues to work on a consultation basis with individual firms in order to address unique problems involving the relation between meaningful work, virtues, and organizational cohesion.
Relevant academic publications
“Work and the Meaning of Being” in Oxford Handbook of Meaningful Work, Ruth Yeoman (ed.), Oxford University Press: 2019, pp. 88–99.
“The Poetics of Meaningful Work: An Analogy to Speech Acts,” in Philosophy and Social Criticism, 45:1 (2019): 50–70.
Land and the Given Economy: An Essay in the Hermeneutics and Phenomenology of Dwelling, Northwestern University Press: 2017.
Heidegger, Work, and Being, Continuum: 2009.
“Form and Figure: Paul Ricoeur and the Rehabilitation of Human Work,” The Journal of French Philosophy, 16:1 & 2 (Spring and Fall 2006): 57–70.