History

History of Philosophy

Many of our faculty have primary or secondary interests in the History of Philosophy. Several faculty members in the History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine department focus on the history of metaphysical and epistemological issues.

Ancient: Matthew Adams, Bridger Ehli, Adam Leite, Katy Meadows, Sadie McCloud
Early Modern: Kate Abramson (British Philosophy, especially Hume), Bridger Ehli (Hume), David Sussman (Kant)
19th Century: David Sussman
Post-Kantian: Analytic and “Proto”-Analytic: Gary Ebbs (Frege, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Quine); Adam Leite (Analytic Philosophy); Kirk Ludwig (Davidson).

Some of our adjunct faculty also add to our resources in History of Philosophy, including:

Africana Philosophy: Alexus McLeod
Chinese Philosophy: Aaron Stalnaker, Michael Ing, Alexus McLeod
Islamic Philosophy: John Walbridge
Meosamerican Philosophy: Alexus McLeod
Native American & Indigenous Philosophy: Michael Ing

Selected articles

Ancient Philosophy

Adams, Matthew. 2019. "Plato's Theory of Punishment and Penal Code in the Laws." Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (1): 1-14.

Meadows, Katy. “Causal Priority in Metaphysics Θ.8”, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 2023.

Meadows, Katy. “Why vice doesn’t pay: the dialectical role of the Laws X myth”, Ancient Philosophy 2024.

Meadows, Katy. Forthcoming. “The Limits of Plato’s Test”, Apeiron.

History of Modern Philosophy

Abramson, Kate. 2026. “The Forensic Notion of the Self and the Sensible Knave” in British Philosophy in the Long Eighteenth Century: Themes from Kenneth Winkler, edited by B. Ehli and M. Lesinger, Routledge.

Abramson, Kate. 2015. “What’s so ‘Natural’ about Hume’s Natural Virtues?” in The Cambridge Critical Guide to Hume’s Treatise, edited by Donald Ainslie & Anne Marie Butler, Cambridge University Press: 333-368.

Abramson, Kate. 2013. “Affective Conflict and virtue: Hume’s answer to Aristotle,” The Reception of Aristotle’s Ethics, edited by Jon Millar, Cambridge University Press: 222-243.

Ebbs, Gary. “Reading Quine’s Claim that Carnap’s Term ‘Semantical Rule’ is Meaningless,” in Sean Morris, ed., The Philosophical Project of Carnap and Quine (Cambridge University Press, 2023), pp. 135–153.

Ehli, Bridger. "Skepticism and the Idea of Body in Hume." Forthcoming. Journal of the History of Philosophy.

Ehli, Bridger. "Hume on Modal Projection." 2024. Mind 133 (529): 167–195.

Ehli, Bridger. "Fiction and Content in Hume's Labyrinth." 2024. Philosophical Quarterly 74 (1): 187–207.

Ehli, Bridger. "Locke, Simplicity, and Extension." 2023. Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 105 (2): 289–314.

Ehli, Bridger. "Leibniz and the Molyneux Problem.” 2020. Journal of Modern Philosophy 2 (1): 1-18.

History of Analytic Philosophy

Ebbs, Gary. 2011. "Carnap and Quine on Truth by Convention." Mind 120 (478): 193-237.

Ebbs, Gary. “Carnap on Analyticity and Existence: A Clarification, Defense, and Development of Quine’s Reading of Carnap’s Views on Ontology,” Journal for the History of Analytic Philosophy, 7(5), September 2019, pp. 1–62.

Ludwig, Kirk. 2015. "Was Davidson's Project a Carnapian Explication of Meaning?" The Journal of the History of Analytic Philosophy 4 (3): 1-55.

Department of Philosophy

History

History of Philosophy

Selected articles

The College of Arts & Sciences

History

History of Philosophy

Selected articles

Department of Philosophy social media channels

The College of Arts & Sciences