We offer traditional areas of philosophy along with research and teaching in the more directly practical areas of bioethics, environmental philosophy and ethics, and social and political thought.
Faculty are producing important scholarship in traditional philosophical sub-disciplines. At the same time, we have established areas of concentration focusing on more immediate and practical concerns. In conjunction with scholars in MSU's medical schools and environmental and agricultural science programs, the department has achieved national distinction in ethical and theoretical debates about issues pertaining to health care, food and the environment. These efforts overlap with research and teaching on race and gender issues, democratic theory, ethics and development, and critical social theory. With our commitment to this combination of problems, we are a distinctive program with a purposeful and diverse graduate student body.
The graduate program supports interdisciplinary work in such programs as Environmental Science and Policy; Gender, Justice, and Environmental Change; African American and African Studies; Ecology, Evolutionary Biology and Behavior; Cognitive Science; and Women, Gender, and Social Justice. The global dimension of the department is illustrated by its Ethics and Development graduate specialization. The faculty has been ranked among the most productive in the nation and our graduate students hail from around the world.
Congratulations to Professor John Grey for winning the prize with his paper, "The Metaphysics of Natural Right in Spinoza"! An abstract and PDF of his article can be found on the Marc Sanders Foundation website, along with the announcement of his award.
Congratulations to Laura Y. Cabrera, Aaron M. McCright, Robyn Bluhm and Eric Achtyes!
The American Philosophical Association and Philosophy Documentation Center have awarded MSU's Toolbox Dialogue Initiative with the 2018 Prize for Excellence and Innovation. Congratulations to everyone involved!
Professor Heather Douglas has joined the College of Arts and Letters as an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy.
The Martin Benjamin and Bruce L. Miller Award is awarded to the most promising student at an early stage in philosophy.
The Lewis K. Zerby Prize is awarded for the best philosophy essay written by an undergraduate student at MSU. Logan Cross wins the Zerby Price with "A Matter of Freedom: A Defense of Sartre's Anthropological Marxism."
Congratulations to Prratek Ramchandani for receiving the The Zerby Award (Best Undergraduate Paper) for his paper titled "Particular Forms in Aristotle's Metaphysics: Resolving the Dileamma."
After hosting its first speaker, Dr. Mimi Kim, on February 9th & 10th, the Transformative Justice Series will continue on March 29th & 30th with Mia Mingus, community organizer and educator. See the calendar for event details.
"Paul Thompson is one of the pre-eminent philosophers of agriculture and food ethics in the world."
Read Kyle Whyte's article in The Conversation.
Elucidations, a University of Chicago Philosophy Podcast, interviews Dr. Dotson on epistemic oppression.
Dr. Kristie Dotson organizes a joint symposium with Massey University's Dr. Krushil Watene. The symposium is titled "New Routes to Diversity in Philosophy: Contributions from the Pacific and Australasia" and it will take place in Auckland, New Zealand on August 18-19, 2017.
"The AAAS Community Engagement Fellows Program, supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is designed to improve online collaboration and community-building in science." (www.aaas.org/cefp/about)
Yale Environment 360 interviews Kyle Powys Whyte
Paul Thompson's recent article in The Conversation.
SPEP is the main North-American society for Continental Philosophy and the second largest philosophical society in the US. (http://www.spep.org/)
Read Kyle Whyte's article in The Conversation
"The ASBH Student Paper Award recognizes up to three papers for writing clarity and quality, development of the argument, integration of the literature, and novelty/insight of the contribution, and quality of the oral presentation." (http://asbh.org/about/awards)
The Martin Benjamin and Bruce L. Miller Award is awarded to the most promising student at an early stage in philosophy.
The Lewis K. Zerby Prize is awarded for the best philosophy essay written by an undergraduate student at MSU. The winner receives $250.
The Joseph L. Blau Prize is awarded annually to the author of the paper that makes the most significant contribution to the history of American Philosophy from colonial times to the recent present. The prize is given for Kong's paper "Feminism and Historicist Universalism: A Critical Analysis of Richard Rorty's Anti-Universalism."
The 2016 Teacher-Scholar Award is given to to faculty who early in their careers have earned the respect of students and colleagues for their devotion to and skill in teaching, and whose instruction is linked to and informed by their research and creative activities. Supported by the Office of University Development.
MSU College of Arts and Letters (CAL) graduate students Jennifer Gohlke, German Studies, and Sophia Pavlos, Philosophy, have been named Humanities Without Walls (HWW) 2016 Pre-Doctoral Workshop Fellows, and will join a cohort of 30 graduate students from varied disciplines. The HWW consortium links the humanities centers at 15 research universities, including Michigan State University, throughout the Midwest and beyond.
Hoping to improve Native American tribes’ access to climate science tools, a Michigan State University researcher will use a four-year $450,000 National Science Foundation grant to foster better relations between tribes and scientific organizations when dealing with climate change. Read more here.
