The Howison Lectures in Philosophy are a lecture series established in 1919 by friends and former students of George Howison, who served as the Mills Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity at the University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

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Past lectures

1922 — William Ernest Hocking

William Ernest Hocking

William Ernest Hocking was an American idealist philosopher at Harvard University. He continued the work of his philosophical teacher Josiah Royce in revising idealism to integrate and fit into empiricism, naturalism and pragmatism...

 — "Naturalism and the Belief in Purpose"; "Intuitionism and Idealism"; "Realism and Mysticism"

1923 — Arthur Oncken Lovejoy

Arthur Oncken Lovejoy

Arthur Oncken Lovejoy was an influential American philosopher and intellectual historian, who founded the field known as the history of ideas....

 — "The Discontinuities of Evolution"

1925 — William Pepperell Montague

William Pepperell Montague

William Pepperell Montague was a philosopher of the New Realist school. Montague stressed the difference between his philosophical peers as adherents of either "objective" and "critical realism"....

 — "Time and the Fourth Dimension"

1925 — Ralph Barton Perry

Ralph Barton Perry

Ralph Barton Perry was an American philosopher.-Career:...

 — "A Modernist View of National Ideals"

1926 — Clarence Irving Lewis

Clarence Irving Lewis

Clarence Irving Lewis , usually cited as C. I. Lewis, was an American academic philosopher and the founder of conceptual pragmatism. First a noted logician, he later branched into epistemology, and during the last 20 years of his life, he wrote much on ethics.-Early years:Lewis was born in...

 — "The Pragmatic Element in Knowledge"

1927 — Evander Bradley McGilvary

Evander Bradley McGilvary

Evander Bradley McGilvary, Ph.D. was an American philosophical scholar, born in Bangkok to American Presbyterian missionaries, the Rev. Daniel McGilvary and Mrs. Sophia McGilvary. He came to the United States to study, graduating from Davidson College in 1884 and from Princeton University in 1888...

 — "Space and Time"

1929 — Robert Mark Wenley

1930 — James Hayden Tufts

James Hayden Tufts

James Hayden Tufts , an influential American philosopher, was a professor of the then newly founded Chicago University. Tufts was also a member of the Board of Arbitration, and the chairman of a committee of the social agencies of Chicago. The work Ethics in 1908 was a collaboration of Tufts and...

 — "Recent Ethical Theories"

1931 — John Dewey

John Dewey

John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...

 — "Thought and Context"

1932 — Walter Goodnow Everett

Walter Goodnow Everett

Walter Goodnow Everett was a professor of Latin, philosophy, and natural theology from 1890 to 1930 at Brown University. Everett House, a freshman hall on campus was named after him. He was head of the philosophy department at Brown from 1896 to 1930, and also served as acting university president...

 — "The Uniqueness of Man"

1933 — F. C. S. Schiller — "Theory and Practice"

1934 — G. Watts Cunningham — "Perspective and Contact in the Meaning Situation"

1935 — Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge

Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge

Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge was a teacher at various American universities. Woodbridge considered himself a naïve realist, deeply impressed with Santayana...

 — "An Approach to a Theory of Nature"

1936 — Henry W. Stuart — "Knowledge and Self-Consciousness"

1937 — Heinrich Gomperz

Heinrich Gomperz

Heinrich Gomperz was an Austrian philosopher.He was a son of Theodor Gomperz...

 — "Limits of Cognition and Exigencies of Action"

1941 — George Holland Sabine

George Holland Sabine

G. H. Sabine popularly known as Sabine was professor of philosophy, dean of the Graduate School and vice president of Cornell University. He is best known for his authoritative work A History of Political Theory which traces the growth of political thought from the times of Plato to the modern day...

 — "Social Studies and Objectivity"

1941 — George Edward Moore

George Edward Moore

George Edward Moore OM, was an English philosopher. He was, with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Gottlob Frege, one of the founders of the analytic tradition in philosophy...

 — "Certainty"

1943 — Charles Montague Bakewell

Charles Montague Bakewell

Charles Montague Bakewell was a university professor and Republican politician. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He became a university professor, then a member of the Connecticut state senate, 1920-24; United States Representative from Connecticut at-large, 1933-35; delegate to the...

 — "Philosophy Goes to War"

1944 — Curt John Ducasse

Curt John Ducasse

Curt John Ducasse was a philosopher who taught at the University of Washington and Brown University.Ducasse was born in Angoulême, France. He is most notable for his work in philosophy of mind and aesthetics, and his influence can be seen in the work of Roderick Chisholm and Wilfrid Sellars...

 — "The Method of Knowledge in Philosophy"

1945 — Harvey Gates Townsend — "The History of Townsend"

1946 — Wilmon Henry Sheldon

Wilmon Henry Sheldon

-Life and career:Sheldon was educated at Harvard University and taught at Yale.-References:...

1947 — Alexander Meiklejohn

Alexander Meiklejohn

Alexander Meiklejohn was a philosopher, university administrator, and free-speech advocate. He served as dean of Brown University and president of Amherst College.- Life and career:...

 — "Inclinations and Obligations"

1949 — George Boas

George Boas

George Boas was a Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University.He received his education at Brown University, obtaining both a BA and MA in Philosophy there, after which he studied...

 — "The Acceptance of Time"

1954 — Brand Blanshard

Brand Blanshard

Percy Brand Blanshard was an American philosopher known primarily for his defense of reason. A powerful polemicist, by all accounts he comported himself with courtesy and grace in philosophical controversies and exemplified the "rational temper" he advocated.-Life:Brand Blanshard was born August...

 — "The Impasse of Ethics - and a Way Out"

1954 — Gilbert Ryle

Gilbert Ryle

Gilbert Ryle , was a British philosopher, a representative of the generation of British ordinary language philosophers that shared Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems, and is principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase "the ghost in the...

 — "Some Problems in the Theory of Meaning"

1954 — Walter Terence Stace

Walter Terence Stace

Walter Terence Stace was a British civil servant, educator, philosopher and epistemologist, who wrote on Hegel, Mysticism, and Moral relativism...

 — "Mysticism and Human Reason"

1956 — Józef Maria Bocheński

Józef Maria Bochenski

Józef Maria Bocheński was a Polish Dominican, logician and philosopher.-Life:...

 — "Logic and Philosophy"

1957 — Kurt von Fritz — "Aristotle's Contribution to the Theory and Practice of Historiography"

1957 — John Wisdom

John Wisdom

Arthur John Terence Dibben Wisdom was a leading British philosopher considered to be an ordinary language philosopher, a philosopher of mind and a metaphysician. He was influenced by G.E...

 — "Paradox and Discovery"

1959 — Willard Van Orman Quine

Willard Van Orman Quine

Willard Van Orman Quine was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition...

 — "The Assuming of Objects"

1960 — Ernest Nagel

Ernest Nagel

Ernest Nagel was a Czech-American philosopher of science. Along with Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach, and Carl Hempel, he is sometimes seen as one of the major figures of the logical positivist movement....

 — "The Cognitive Status of Theories"

1961 — Gabriel Honori Marcel — "Man, Techniques, and Meta-Techniques"

1963 — Henry H. Price — "Causes of Belief and Reasons for Belief"

1963 — Peter Geach

Peter Geach

Peter Thomas Geach is a British philosopher. His areas of interest are the history of philosophy, philosophical logic, and the theory of identity.He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford...

 — "Assertion"

1963 — Elizabeth Anscombe — "The Intentionality of Sensation: A Grammatical Feature"

1964 — Carl G. Hempel — "Problems of Induction"

1968 — Stuart Hampshire

Stuart Hampshire

Sir Stuart Newton Hampshire was an Oxford University philosopher, literary critic and university administrator. He was one of the antirationalist Oxford thinkers who gave a new direction to moral and political thought in the post-World War II era.Hampshire was educated at Repton School and at...

 — "Sincerity and Uncertainty"

1971 — Gunther Patzing — "Truth, Determinism and Uncertainty"

1977 — Saul Kripke

Saul Kripke

Saul Aaron Kripke is an American philosopher and logician. He is a professor emeritus at Princeton and teaches as a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center...

 — "Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language: An Exposition"

1977 — Peter F. Strawson — "Perception and Its Objects"; "Reference and Its Roots"

1978 — Robert Nozick

Robert Nozick

Robert Nozick was an American political philosopher, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia , a right-libertarian answer to John Rawls's A Theory of Justice...

 — "The Identity of the Self. Why is there Something Rather than Nothing?"

1979 — Patrick Suppes

Patrick Suppes

Patrick Colonel Suppes is an American philosopher who has made significant contributions to philosophy of science, the theory of measurement, the foundations of quantum mechanics, decision theory, psychology, and educational technology...

 — "The Limits of Rationality"

1979 — John Rawls

John Rawls

John Bordley Rawls was an American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard University....

 — "Constructivist Moral Conceptions"

1979 — David Kellogg Lewis

David Kellogg Lewis

David Kellogg Lewis was an American philosopher. Lewis taught briefly at UCLA and then at Princeton from 1970 until his death. He is also closely associated with Australia, whose philosophical community he visited almost annually for more than thirty years...

 — "Causal Explanation"

1980 — Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...

 — "Truth and Subjectivity"

1981 — Hilary Putnam

Hilary Putnam

Hilary Whitehall Putnam is an American philosopher, mathematician and computer scientist, who has been a central figure in analytic philosophy since the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science...

 — "The Transcendence of Reason"; "Why There Isn't a Ready-Made World"; "Why Reason Can't Be Naturalized"

1983 — Richard Rorty

Richard Rorty

Richard McKay Rorty was an American philosopher. He had a long and diverse academic career, including positions as Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University...

 — "Relativism"

1984 — Gregory Vlastos

Gregory Vlastos

Gregory Vlastos was a scholar of ancient philosophy, and author of several works on Plato and Socrates. He was also a Christian and has written on Christian faith as well.-Life and works:...

 — "Socrates' Disavowal of Knowledge"; "The Socratic Fallacy"

1985 — Nelson Goodman

Nelson Goodman

Henry Nelson Goodman was an American philosopher, known for his work on counterfactuals, mereology, the problem of induction, irrealism and aesthetics.-Career:...

 — "A Reconception of Philosophy"

1986 — Michael A. E. Dummett — "The Justification of Logical Laws"

1987 — Thomas Nagel

Thomas Nagel

Thomas Nagel is an American philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, where he has taught since 1980. His main areas of philosophical interest are philosophy of mind, political philosophy and ethics...

 — "Moral Conflict and Political Legitimacy"

1988 — Bernard Williams

Bernard Williams

Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams was an English moral philosopher, described by The Times as the most brilliant and most important British moral philosopher of his time. His publications include Problems of the Self , Moral Luck , Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy , and Truth and Truthfulness...

 — "Philosophy and the Fragments of Enlightenment"

1988 — Jürgen Habermas

Jürgen Habermas

Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...

1994 — Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...

 — "Naturalism and Dualism in the Study of Language and Mind"

1996 — Myles Burnyeat

Myles Burnyeat

Myles Fredric Burnyeat CBE FBA is an English classicist and philosopher.-Life:Educated at Bryanston School and King’s College, Cambridge, Burnyeat was a student of Bernard Williams at University College London....

 — "Freedom, Anger, Tranquility - An Archaeology of Feeling"; "Ancient Freedoms"; "Anger and Revenge"; "Happiness and Tranquility"

1999 — Nancy Cartwright

Nancy Cartwright (philosopher)

Nancy Cartwright FBA is a professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics and the University of California at San Diego, and a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship...

 — "The Dappled World"

2000 — Michael Frede

Michael Frede

Michael Frede was a prominent professor and researcher on ancient philosophy.- Education and career :Frede earned his Ph.D...

 — "On Aristotle's Notion of the Soul"

2002 — Ronald M. Dworkin — "Truth, Interpretation, and the Point of Moral Philosophy"

2002 — Stanley Cavell

Stanley Cavell

Stanley Louis Cavell is an American philosopher. He is the Walter M. Cabot Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University.-Life:...

 — "Philosophy the Day After Tomorrow: Moments in Nietzsche, Jane Austen, et cetera."; "The Wittgensteinian Event

2004 — David Kaplan

David Kaplan (philosopher)

David Benjamin Kaplan is an American philosopher and logician teaching at UCLA. His philosophical work focuses on logic, philosophical logic, modality, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology. He is best known for his work on demonstratives, on propositions, and on reference in...

 — "The Meaning of 'Ouch' and 'Oops'"

2005 — Judith Jarvis Thomson

Judith Jarvis Thomson

Judith Jarvis Thomson is an American moral philosopher and metaphysician, best known for her use of thought experiments to make philosophical points.- Career :...

 — "Normativity"

2006 — John McDowell

John McDowell

John Henry McDowell is a South African philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford and now University Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written extensively on metaphysics, epistemology, ancient philosophy, and meta-ethics, McDowell's most influential work...

 — "Intention in Action"

2007 — Fred Dretske

Fred Dretske

Frederick Irwin Dretske is a philosopher noted for his contributions to epistemology and the philosophy of mind. His more recent work centers on conscious experience and self-knowledge. Additionally, he was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize in 1994...

 — "What We See"

2007 — T. M. Scanlon

T. M. Scanlon

Thomas Michael Scanlon is the Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity in Harvard University's Department of Philosophy. He has been awarded a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant. He grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana; earned his Ph.D...

 — "The Ethics of Blame"

2009 — John Perry

John Perry (philosopher)

John R. Perry is Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. He has made significant contributions to areas of philosophy, including logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind...

— "Thinking and Talking About the Self"

External links

• Howison Lectures in Philosophy, Graduate Council Lectures website