The John Locke

John Locke

John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...

 Lectures are a series of annual lectures in philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 given at the University of Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

. They are one of the world's most prestigious academic lecture series, comparable to the Gifford Lectures

Gifford Lectures

The Gifford Lectures were established by the will of Adam Lord Gifford . They were established to "promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term — in other words, the knowledge of God." The term natural theology as used by Gifford means theology supported...

 given in Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 universities. They were established in 1950 by the bequest of a Henry Wilde.

The first lecture series was offered to Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...

, who eventually declined. According to his biographers, he felt uncomfortable giving formal lectures where the audience would not be asking or answering questions.

Lecturers

The lectures began as an uncertain biannual series, with the first lecturer from 1950-1951, and missing the second slot from 1952-1953. Between 1969 and 2001, the lectures became gradually more frequent. Since 2001, the lecture notes have been made available electronically.

EWLINE Year Lecturer Lectures published as 1950-1951 Oets Kolk Bouwsma Oets Kolk Bouwsma Oets Kolk Bouwsma was an American philosopher born of Dutch-American parents in Muskegon, Michigan.-Education and early career:He was educated at Calvin College and at the University of Michigan. In his early years he was an advocate of idealism, but later found the work of G. E. Moore’s common...   1954-1955 Hao Wang  1955-1956 Arthur Prior Arthur Prior Arthur Norman Prior was a noted logician and philosopher. Prior founded tense logic, now also known as temporal logic, and made important contributions to intensional logic, particularly in Prior .-Biography:Prior was entirely educated in New Zealand, where he was fortunate to have come under the...   Time and Modality (1957) 1957-1958 A.C. Jackson  1959-1960 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:...   1961-1962 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:...   1963-1964 Jaakko Hintikka Jaakko Hintikka Kaarlo Jaakko Juhani Hintikka is a Finnish philosopher and logician.Hintikka was born in Vantaa. After teaching for a number of years at Florida State University, Stanford, University of Helsinki, and the Academy of Finland, he is currently Professor of Philosophy at Boston University...   1965-1966 Wilfrid Sellars Wilfrid Sellars Wilfrid Stalker Sellars was an American philosopher. His father was the Canadian-American philosopher Roy Wood Sellars, a leading American philosophical naturalist in the first half of the twentieth-century...   Science and Metaphysics 1967-1968 Paul Lorenzen Paul Lorenzen Paul Lorenzen was a philosopher andmathematician.As a founder of the Erlangen School and the inventor of game semantics he was a famous German philosopher of the 20th century.-Biography:Lorenzen studied with David Hilbert as a schoolboy and he was one of Hasse's...   1968-1969 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...   1969-1970 Donald Davidson Donald Davidson (philosopher) Donald Herbert Davidson was an American philosopher born in Springfield, Massachusetts, who served as Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley from 1981 to 2003 after having also held teaching appointments at Stanford University, Rockefeller University, Princeton...   On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme 1971-1972 Sydney Shoemaker Sydney Shoemaker Sydney Shoemaker is an American philosopher. Until his retirement, he was a Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University. He holds a PhD from Cornell and BA from Reed. In 1971, he delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford University...   1973-1974 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...   Unpublished 1974-1975 Richard Brandt Richard Brandt Richard Booker Brandt was an American philosopher of the utilitarian tradition in moral philosophy. He taught at Swarthmore College before spending the bulk of his career at the University of Michigan, where he taught with Charles Stevenson and William K. Frankena and served as Chairman of the...   1975-1976 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...   1976-1977 no lectures 1977-1978 no lectures 1978-1979 Paul Grice Paul Grice Herbert Paul Grice , usually publishing under the name H. P. Grice, H...   Aspects of Reason 1979-1980 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...   1980-1981 no lectures 1981-1982 no lectures 1982-1983 Daniel Dennett Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the Co-director of...   Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting 1983-1984 David 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...   1984-1985 no lectures 1985-1986 no lectures

EWLINE Year Lecturer Lectures published as 1986-1987 Barry Stroud Barry Stroud Barry Stroud is a philosopher known for his work on philosophical skepticism, David Hume, and Wittgenstein, among other topics. He received a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Toronto, followed by a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University, under the direction of Morton White. Since...   1987-1988 no lectures 1988-1989 no lectures 1989-1990 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...   Equality and Partiality 1990-1991 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...   Mind and World 1991-1992 Jonathan Bennett Jonathan Bennett (philosopher) Jonathan Francis Bennett is a British philosopher of language and metaphysics, and a historian of early modern philosophy.Born in Greymouth, New Zealand, Bennett was educated at the University of Oxford. He has taught at the University of Cambridge , Simon Fraser University , the University of...   1992-1993 Tyler Burge Tyler Burge Tyler Burge is a Professor of Philosophy at UCLA. He has made contributions to several areas of philosophy, including the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and the history of philosophy. In the history of philosophy, he has published articles on the philosophy of Gottlob Frege...   1993-1994 no lectures 1994-1995 Frank Jackson Frank Cameron Jackson Frank Cameron Jackson is an Australian philosopher, currently Distinguished Professor and former Director of the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University. In 2007-2008, he also became a regular visiting professor of philosophy at Princeton University...   From Metaphysics to Ethics 1995-1996 no lectures 1996-1997 Jerry Fodor Jerry Fodor Jerry Alan Fodor is an American philosopher and cognitive scientist. He holds the position of State of New Jersey Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University and is the author of many works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science, in which he has laid the groundwork for the...   Concepts:Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong 1996-1997 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...   1997-1998 Lawrence Sklar Lawrence Sklar Lawrence Sklar is an American philosopher. He is the Carl G. Hempel and William K. Frankena Distinguished UniversityProfessor at the University of Michigan. He specialises in the Philosophy of Physics, approaching a wide range of issues from a position best described as highly sceptical of many of...   1998-1999 no lectures 1999-2000 no lectures 2000-2001 Bas van Fraassen  2001-2002 Christine Korsgaard Christine Korsgaard Christine Marion Korsgaard is an American philosopher and academic whose main scholarly interests are in moral philosophy and its history; the relation of issues in moral philosophy to issues in metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and the theory of personal identity; the theory of personal...   Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, Integrity (2009) 2002-2003 Kit Fine Kit Fine Kit Fine is Silver Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics at New York University. He previously taught for several years at UCLA...   2003-2004 Jonathan Barnes Jonathan Barnes Jonathan Barnes is a British philosopher, translator and historian of ancient philosophy.-Education and career:He was educated at the City of London School and Balliol College, Oxford University....   Truth, etc. (2007) 2004-2005 Ernest Sosa Ernest Sosa Ernest Sosa is an American philosopher primarily interested in epistemology. He is currently Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. He has been at Rutgers full-time since January, 2007; previously, he had been at Brown University since 1964...   2005-2006 Robert Brandom  Between Saying and Doing (2008) 2006-2007 Robert Stalnaker Robert Stalnaker Robert C. Stalnaker is Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2007, he delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford University on the topic of Our Knowledge of the Internal World...   2007-2008 Hartry Field Hartry Field Hartry H. Field is a philosopher, the Silver Professor of Philosophy at New York University. He previously taught at the University of Southern California and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He earned his Ph.D...   2008-2009 Thomas M. Scanlon  2009-2010 David Chalmers David Chalmers David John Chalmers is an Australian philosopher specializing in the area of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, whose recent work concerns verbal disputes. He is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University...

External links

• John Locke Lectures, lectures complete list, and some available online