Ian Angus

Ian Henderson Angus (born 1949) is an interdisciplinary philosopher and social critic who writes on continental philosophy, Canadian studies, communication theory, social movements, ecological thought, and the university. Education Angus was born on 18 April 1949 in London, England. He holds Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in philosophy from the University of Waterloo and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in social and political thought from York University (1980). He has taught at the University of New Hampshire, Trent University, and University of Massachusetts at Amherst (1986–1992) and is currently a professor in the Department of Humanities at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. Work Continental philosophy Angus's early intellectual formation began with a dual engagement with 20th-century phenomenology, particularly the work of Edmund Husserl, and the Frankfurt school of critical theory around the problems of technology and modern capitalism. Focusing on the notion of "instrumental reason" as a legitimating principle of technology, his first book Technique and Enlightenment (1984) argues for a form of technological assessment that is both ethical and acknowledges its role within the larger problematic of the construction of human identity. His subsequent work branched into a wider conception of the problem of modernity in critical engagement with discourse theory, post-structuralism, and rhetorical theory. In Primal Scenes of Communsdadwdadweadawdwadwadication (2000) "the complex linguistic model Angus has created regards the immanent link of identity creation involved in communication theories, but ... his concerns deal with this struggle for, and the shaping of, our faculties of attention."