Gustave M. Berne Professor
North American Editor, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie

M.A., Philosophy, Rutgers (1978)
Latin Certificate, Gregorian University, Rome, Italy (1980-81)
Universität Münster, Münster, Germany (1984-85)
M.A., Philosophy, Princeton University (1984)
Ph.D., Philosophy, Princeton University (1989)

Teaching:
Besides teaching courses in the history of philosophy, Mercer teaches Philosophy and Feminism, Literature Humanities, Art Humanities, and related courses.

Areas of Present Research:
Seventeenth-Century Aristotelianism, Platonism, and Humanism; early modern history of science, metaphysics, and philosophical method. Three main works in progress: a series of articles on how the interpretation offered in my book, Leibniz’s Metaphysics: Its Origins and Development, applies to Leibniz’s later works; a book-length reevaluation of the development of early modern philosophy in pre-Enlightenment Germany, entitled ‘Divine Madness’: Metaphysics, Method, and Mind in Early Modern German Philosophy; and an historical and critical study of the notion of matter in the development of seventeenth-century science, entitled Material Difficulties: Matter, Explanation, and Mind in Early Modern Philosophy.

Areas of Competence:
Renaissance and Sixteenth-Century Philosophy; Philosophical Theology; Ancient Philosophy; Medieval Philosophy, especially Augustine and Platonism; Feminism and History of Feminism