News

Philosophy concentrator/musician Brynn Elliott performs at Queen's Head

March 02, 2017

On March 8th at 7:30 PM, junior philosophy concentrator and musician Brynn Elliott will perform a free concert at the Queen's Head Pub at Harvard. Elliott, who was profiled in December on our website after being featured in the Harvard Gazette, will be...

Library discovers lectures by J. L. Austin

March 03, 2017

Two recordings of a lecture and Q&A session given by the philosopher J. L. Austin to a Swedish audience in October of 1959 were recently discovered to be among the uncatalogued holdings of the Robbins Library of Philosophy. The recordings had apparently...

Becca Rothfeld nominated for ASME award

January 30, 2017

The Department of Philosophy is proud to announce that doctoral candidate Becca Rothfeld has been nominated for an Ellie Award by the American Society of Magazine Editors. Founded in 1966, the awards "honor print and digital publications that consistently...

Nguyen and McDonough add new entry to REP

January 16, 2017

Doctoral candidate Tran (Jen) Nguyen and Professor of Philosophy Jeffrey McDonough recently co-authored a new entry on Leibniz's monads for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. A summary of the article is available to non-subscribers. Subscribers...

Siegel publishes The Rationality of Perception

January 18, 2017

Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy Susanna Siegel has published a new book, The Rationality of Perception, with Oxford University Press. The Rationality of Perception makes an important contribution to our understanding of the human mind and...

In Memoriam: Derek Parfit (11 December 1942 - 1 January 2017)

January 04, 2017

It is with deep sadness that we report the loss to the philosophical community of Derek Parfit. For many years, Derek made this department another philosophical home, and during his time here he greatly enriched the lives of his faculty colleagues and...

Kickstarter campaign launched to digitize former department member's library

December 14, 2016

Although he has been dead for half a century, William Ernest Hocking, Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University—an endowed chair currently held by professor emeritus T. M...

Shelby's Dark Ghettos fills "normative gap" in discussions of urban poverty

December 08, 2016

In a country of obvious wealth—and one that purports to embrace the ideal of equality of opportunity for all of its citizens—why do American ghettos persist? Many theories have been advanced over the years to explain the persistence of American ghettos...

New Book Titles for December

December 01, 2016

As part of the library's ongoing effort to build the quality of its collections, we have added the following titles to our holdings for December: Anstey, Peter R., John Locke and natural philosophy (Oxford, 2011) Boghossian, Paul Artin, Content and...

Three chords and some Kierkegaard

December 01, 2016

Kierkegaard and Sartre are to Brynn Elliott what Rimbaud and Blake were to Patti Smith: sources of deep musical inspiration. A junior philosophy concentrator, Elliott '18 is also a working musician, traveling on weekends to perform shows with her L.A...

Prescott-Couch publishes "Explanation and Manipulation" in Noûs

November 15, 2016

Alexander Prescott-Couch (Harvard University, PhD) has had his article "Explanation and Manipulation" accepted for publication in the journal Noûs. Prescott-Couch, who is currently a postodoctoral associate at MIT, received his PhD from Harvard in 2015...

Rabenberg and Gura Sadovsky named Safra Graduate Fellows in Ethics

May 09, 2016

Michael Rabenberg and Ronni Gura Sadovsky will join the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics as Graduate Fellows for the 2016-2017 academic year. As part of their year-long fellowship, the two will take part in the Center's weekly seminar, which brings...