Welcome to my home page. I hope this page will be of use to my students, prospective Harvard students, and anyone trying to figure out how to reach me or locate one of my publications. Below you will find information about:

Me

How to reach me

The courses I teach

My publications and other writings, and how to find some of them

Places you might want to go next

My C.V.

1. Christine M. Korsgaard

I am a Professor of Philosophy and Director of Graduate Studies in Philosophy at Harvard University, where I have taught since 1991. This year, while I am on leave, the Acting Director of Graduate Studies is Gisela Striker. From July 1996 through June 2002, I was Chair of the Department of Philosophy. (The current chair is Richard Moran.) Before coming here, I held positions at Yale, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Chicago, as well as visiting positions at Berkeley and UCLA.

My primary (academic) interests are in moral philosophy and its history; in the relation of issues in moral philosophy to issues in metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and the theory of personal identity; in the theory of personal relationships; and in normativity in general.

2. How to reach me

At the department:

Department of Philosophy
208 Emerson Hall
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

Office Hours:

Thursdays, 2:00-4:00, 205 Emerson Hall

3. Courses

Last year I taught seminars on
Contemporary Ethical Theory and Practical Reason (click for the course websites, on which the syllabi can be found).


In recent years I have regularly taught courses on:

Kant's Ethical Theory.(Spring 2006 Syllabus)
The History of Modern Moral Philosophy (Fall 2005 Syllabus)
Recent Ethical Theory (Spring 2005 Syllabus)

Some other courses I have taught include:

The Ethical Thought of Hume. (Spring 2003 Syllabus)
Seminar on Action (Spring 2003 Syllabus)
Seminar on Kant's Religious and Political Philosophy (Fall 2001 syllabus)
Seminar on Aristotle's Ethics (Spring 1998 Syllabus)
Personal Identity
Plato's Middle Dialogues
Rawls's Theory of Justice

4. Publications and Other Writings

Books

Essays

Other Publications and Writings

Encyclopedia Articles

Co-Editor

The Locke Lectures 2002

The Sources of Normativity, Cambridge University Press, 1996

An expanded version of my 1992 Tanner Lectures

In these lectures I identify four accounts of the normativity of moral obligation which have been advocated by modern moral philosophers. I trace their history, showing how each developed in response to the prior one, and compare earlier versions with those on the contemporary philosophical scene. Kant's theory that normativity springs from our own autonomy emerges as a synthesis of the other three, and in the latter part of the lectures I conclude with my own modified version of the Kantian account. The lectures are followed by commentary from G. A. Cohen, Raymond Geuss, Thomas Nagel, and Bernard Williams, and a reply by me.

Click on the title or here for more information about this book from Cambridge University Press.

Creating the Kingdom of Ends, Cambridge University Press, 1996

A collection of my previously published papers on Kant's moral philosophy and Kantian approaches to issues in contemporary moral philosophy.

Table of Contents:

Part One: Kant's Moral Philosophy
1. An Introduction to the Ethical, Political, and Religious Thought of Kant
2. Kant's Analysis of Obligation: The Argument of Groundwork I
3. Kant's Formula of Universal Law
4. Kant's Formula of Humanity
5. The Right to Lie: Kant on Dealing with Evil
6. Morality as Freedom
7. Creating the Kingdom of Ends: Reciprocity and Responsibility in Personal Relations

Part Two: Comparative Essays
8. Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value
9. Two Distinctions in Goodness
10. The Reasons We Can Share: An Attack on the Distinction Between Agent-Relative and Agent Neutral Values.
11. Skepticism about Practical Reason
12. Two Arguments Against Lying
13. Personal Identity and the Unity of Agency: A Kantian Response to Parfit

Click on the title or here for more information about this book from Cambridge University press.

II. Essays

Natural Motives and the Motive of Duty; Hume and Kant on Our Duties to Others

In progress.

Acting for a Reason

The Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, Volume 40 (2005), 11-36. Also forthcoming in Studies in Practical Reason,edited by V. Bradley Lewis, from Catholic University Press.

Fellow Creatures: Kantian Ethics and Our Duties to Animals

in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, ed. by Grethe B. Peterson. Salt Lake City: Utah University Press, Volume 25/26, and at The Tanner Lectures web site via the link above.

Realism and Constructivism in Twentieth Century Moral Philosophy

APA Centennial Supplement toThe Journal of Philosophical Research, Charlottesville, Virginia: The Philosophy Documentation Center, 2003.

The General Point of View: Love and Moral Approval in Hume's Ethics

Hume Studies Volume XXV, Nos. 1&2, April/November, 1999.

The Myth of Egoism

Available from the University of Kansas as the Lindley Lecture for 1999.

Self-Constitution in the Ethics of Plato and Kant

in The Journal of Ethics 3: 1-29, 1999.

The Normativity of Instrumental Reason

in Ethics and Practical Reason,edited by Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut. Oxford University Press, 1997.

Taking the Law into Our Own Hands: Kant on the Right to Revolution

in Reclaiming the History of Ethics: Essays for John Rawls, edited by Andrews Reath, Barbara Herman, and Christine M. Korsgaard. Cambridge University Press, 1997.

From Duty and for the Sake of the Noble: Kant and Aristotle on Morally Good Action

in Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics: Rethinking Happiness and Duty, edited by Stephen Engstrom and Jennifer Whiting. Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Aristotle's Function Argument

to appear (along with some of the other essays on this list) in The Constitution of Agency: Essays on Practical Reason and Moral Psychology by Christine M. Korsgaard. Forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Aristotle on Function and Virtue

in History of Philosophy QuarterlyVolume 3, Number 3 (July 1986): 259-279.

III. Some Other Publications and Writings

Facing the Animal You See in the Mirror

Morality and the Logic of Caring

Morality and the Distinctiveness of Human Action

The Dependence of Value on Humanity

Normativity, Necessity, and the Synthetic a priori: A Response to Derek Parfit.

Unpublished; written for a conference on Derek Parfit at Rutgers in 2003. Available here.

Ethics at the Intersection of Kant and Aristotle: an Interview with Christine M. Korsgaard

by Ana Marta Gonzalez. In Anuar io Filosofico, XXXVI/3, 2003

Internalism and the Sources of Normativity: An Interview with Christine M. Korsgaard

by Herlinde Pauer-Studer. in Constructions of Practical Reason: Interviews on Moral and Political Philosophy, edited by Herlinde Pauer-Studer.Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. Available here.

Motivation, Metaphysics, and the Value of the Self:

A Reply to Ginsborg, Guyer, and Schneewind

in a symposium on Creating the Kingdom of Ends, Ethics 109 (October, 1998): 49-66.

A Reply to Carol Voeller and Rachel Cohon

Unpublished; written for an "Author Meets Critics" session on The Sources of Normativityfor the Central Division Meetings of the American Philosophical Association in May 1998. Available here.

Introduction to Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

For the edition translated and edited by Mary Gregor in the series Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

An Index to Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

While preparing the Index for the volume above, I prepared a parallel index to the Academy edition pages of the Groundwork. Click here to access it.

Rawls and Kant: On the Primacy of the Practical

in the Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress,Memphis 1995, edited by Hoke Robinson. Marquette University Press, 1995.

A Note on the Value of Gender-Identification

in Women, Culture, and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities, edited by Martha Nussbaum and Jonathan Glover. Oxford University Press, 1995.

Commentary on Amartya Sen's "Capability and Well-Being"

and Gerald Cohen's "Equality of What? On Welfare, Goods, and Capabilities"

in The Quality of Life,edited by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen. Oxford University Press, 1993.

The Standpoint of Practical Reason (Dissertation, 1981)

Published in Garland's Distinguished Harvard Dissertations series, 1990.

IV. Encyclopedia Articles

Theories of the Good in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Teleological Ethics in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Conscience in Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia,Garland, 1996.

Formalism in Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia,Garland, 1996.

Immanuel Kant in The Garland Encyclopedia of Ethics,1992.

John Rawls in The Garland Encyclopedia of Ethics,1992. Second edition version co-authored with Samuel Freeman

Richard Price in The Garland Encyclopedia of Ethics,1992.

V. Co-Editor

Reclaiming the History of Ethics: Essays for John Rawls

edited by Andrews Reath, Barbara Herman, and Christine M. Korsgaard. Cambridge University Press, 1997.

A collection of essays offering an approach to the history of moral and political philosophy that takes its inspiration from John Rawls. All of the contributors are philosophers who have studied with Rawls and we offer this collection in his honor. Includes essays by Marcia L. Homiak, S. A. Lloyd, Jean Hampton, Joshua Cohen, Susan Neiman, Onora O'Neill, Barbara Herman, Andrews Reath, Adrian M. S. Piper, Nancy Sherman, Christine M. Korsgaard, Hannah Ginsborg, Thomas W. Pogge, and Daniel Brudney

Click on the title or here for more information about this book from Cambridge University Press.

The Locke Lectures 2002

In May and June of 2002 I gave the Locke Lectures at Oxford under the title Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity. I hope to publish them, with additions, as a book sometime within the next few years. Here are links to the texts of these lectures,in pdf format.


Lecture One: The Metaphysical Foundations of Normativity
Lecture Two: Practical Reason and the Unity of the Will
Lecture Three: Autonomy, Efficacy, and Agency
Lecture Four: Expulsion from the Garden: The Transition to Humanity
Lecture Five:The Constitutional Model, and Bad Action
Lecture Six: Integrity and Interaction

5. Places you might want to go next