Dr. Joshua Hoffman is a tenured American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 and philosopher at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro , also known as UNC Greensboro, is a public university in Greensboro, North Carolina, United States and is a constituent institution of the University of North Carolina system. The university offers more than 100 undergraduate, 61 master's and 26...

. Dr. Hoffman's primary contributions to the fields of philosophy and rational theology include a number of written works exploring the history of philosophy, metaphysics

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...

, and the divine attributes of natural theology. In recent years, Dr. Hoffman and his contemporary Dr. Gary Rosenkrantz have gained national renown for the Hoffman-Rosenkrantz Theory of Substance as outlined in their book Substance: Its Nature and Existence.

Education

Dr. Hoffman graduated from Trinity College

Trinity College (Connecticut)

Trinity College is a private, liberal arts college in Hartford, Connecticut. Founded in 1823, it is the second-oldest college in the state of Connecticut after Yale University. The college enrolls 2,300 students and has been coeducational since 1969. Trinity offers 38 majors and 26 minors, and has...

 in Hartford, Connecticut in 1967. He continued on to graduate with a PhD from Brandeis University

Brandeis University

Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...

 in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1972. After working for seven years as an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Dr. Hoffman was awarded permanent tenure in 1980. He served as the head of the philosophy department from 1992 to 2000.

Primary Works

• Substance: Its Nature and Existence (1994)
• Substance Among Other Categories (1997)
• Exploring the Divine Attributes (2002)
• Historical Dictionary of Metaphysics (2011)

See also

• American philosophy
  American philosophy
  American philosophy is the philosophical activity or output of Americans, both within the United States and abroad. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that while American philosophy lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can nevertheless be seen as both reflecting and...
  
  
• Substance theory
  Substance theory
  Substance theory, or substance attribute theory, is an ontological theory about objecthood, positing that a substance is distinct from its properties. A thing-in-itself is a property-bearer that must be distinguished from the properties it bears....
  
  
• Natural theology
  Natural theology
  Natural theology is a branch of theology based on reason and ordinary experience. Thus it is distinguished from revealed theology which is based on scripture and religious experiences of various kinds; and also from transcendental theology, theology from a priori reasoning.Marcus Terentius Varro ...
  
  
• Mereology
  Mereology
  In philosophy and mathematical logic, mereology treats parts and the wholes they form...
  
  
• Metaphysics
  Metaphysics
  Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
  
  
• Objecthood
• List of American philosophers