Christine M. Korsgaard

Christine M. Korsgaard

Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University
Christine M. Korsgaard

Christine M Korsgaard (PhD Harvard, 1981) works on moral philosophy and its history, practical reason, agency, personal identity, and human/animal relations. She is the author of five books: The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge, 1996), an expanded version of her 1992 Tanner Lectures, examines the history of ideas about the foundations of obligation in modern moral philosophy and presents an account of her own; Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge, 1996) is a collection of her essays on Kant's Ethics and Kantian Ethics; The Constitution of Agency (Oxford, 2008) is a collection of her recent papers on practical reason and moral psychology; Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity (Oxford, 2009) is a book about the foundation of morality in the nature of agency; and her most recent work, Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals (Oxford University Press, 2018). She is also one of the editors of Reclaiming the History of Ethics: Essays for John Rawls (Cambridge, 1997). In recent years she has taught courses on Kant's Ethical Theory, the History of Modern Moral Philosophy, Contemporary Ethical Theory, Practical Reason, and Action.

Korsgaard has 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.  She received her B.A at the University of Illinois in 1974; her PhD at Harvard in 1981; and holds honorary degrees from the University of Illinois (2004) and Groningen University (2014).

Professor Korsgaard has been a Faculty Associate of the Ethics Center since 1993.

Current Role