Bart Schultz | |
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![]() Bart Schultz, Chicago, August 2018 | |
Born | Reynolds Barton Schultz August 9, 1951 |
Alma mater | University of Chicago |
Era | Contemporary philosophy |
Region | Western philosophy |
School | Analytic philosophy · Utilitarianism |
Main interests | Ethics |
Bart Schultz (born August 9, 1951) is an American philosopher who is Senior Lecturer in Humanities (Philosophy), a faculty affiliate of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture. [1] , and a former Director of the Civic Knowledge Project at the University of Chicago. [2]
Schultz has taught in the college at the University of Chicago since October 1, 1987, having designed a wide range of core courses as well as courses on Teaching Precollegiate Philosophy, Consequentialism from Bentham to Singer, Philosophy and Public Education, The Philosophy of Poverty, John Dewey, The Chicago School of Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Education, Philosophies of Environmentalism and Sustainability, and Philosophy of Happiness. [2]
He has published widely in Philosophy. He is a contributing editor to Essays on Henry Sidgwick (Cambridge, 1992), Utilitarianism and Empire (Lexington, 2005), with G. Varouxakis, Proceedings of the World Congress--University of Catania on H. Sidgwick: Happiness and Religion (Catania: Universita degli Studi di Catania, 2007), with P. Bucolo and R. Crisp, Proceedings of the World Congress--University of Catania on H. Sidgwick II: Ethics, Psychics, and Politics (Catania: Universita degli Studi di Catania, 2011), with P. Bucolo and R. Crisp, and various journal symposia, including the Book Symposium on Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer, The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics (Etica & Politica, Vol. XVIII, No. 1 (Trieste: University of Trieste, April 2016)), with original contributions by Roger Crisp, Brad Hooker, Derek Parfit, and Mariko Nakano, and replies by Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer. [3] Schultz's major books are Henry Sidgwick, Eye of the Universe (Cambridge, 2004) [4] , The Happiness Philosophers: The Lives and Works of the Great Utilitarians (Princeton, 2017) [5] and Utilitarianism as a Way of Life: Re-envisioning Planetary Happiness (Polity Books, 2024). [6]
In 2004 Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe won the American Philosophical Society's Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History. [7]
He has also written and lectured on the philosophies of Barack Obama, Martin Luther King Jr., and Timuel D. Black, and on the politics of race.
Through the Civic Knowledge Project (CKP), Schultz has developed a number of public ethics/humanities programs to provide opportunities for University of Chicago students, staff, and faculty to get involved with the larger South Side community in Chicago. For a select history of his work with the CKP, see his "The New Chicago School of Philosophy" (Rounded Globe, November 15, 2015). [8] He developed the CKP's Winning Words precollegiate philosophy program, which won the 2012 American Philosophical Association's PDC Prize for Excellence and Innovation in Philosophy Programs [9] In 2013, he was honored with the PUSH Excel Outstanding Educator Award by the Rainbow PUSH Coalition [10] , and he subsequently developed, with the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, an educational program called the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Initiative, along with other collaborative programs, such as the "Chicago as Sacred Ground" pedagogical package. [2]
Schultz is on the editorial board of Utilitas, [11] the leading professional journal of utilitarian studies, [12] and served as a founding member of the Board of Directors of PLATO (Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization), [2] the main professional group in the U.S. devoted to precollegiate philosophy. [13]
Schultz's philosophical orientation is complex, highly interdisciplinary, and difficult to describe. He has been deeply influenced by such figures as John Rawls, J.B. Schneewind, Martha Nussbaum, Alan Donagan, Richard Rorty, Derek Parfit, Amartya Sen, Peter Singer, Angela Davis, Noam Chomsky, Michelle Alexander, Edward Said, Roger Crisp, Dale Jamieson, Elizabeth S. Anderson, Danielle Allen and Timuel D. Black. Best known for his work on the 19th-century philosopher Henry Sidgwick, Schultz aims to expand the range of interpretive questions philosophers should consider; his work on the history of philosophy seeks both a deeper historical/critical understanding through the examination of both the lives and the works of such philosophers as Sidgwick, and a candid confrontation with the racism, sexism, and patterns of exclusion that have characterized philosophy both past and present. He claims that this type of historical approach can help unmask the limitations of some popular current forms of academic philosophy. His blog post "On Not Seeing in Philosophy" (September 29, 2016) is suggestive of the critical perspective characteristic of his work [14] Partly for such reasons, and because of his work in environmental philosophy, he has over the last three decades moved steadily away from the more Rawlsian and neo-Kantian frameworks that he was initially drawn to, in the direction of certain forms of consequentialism more characteristic of a Sidgwickian perspective, but with a greater emphasis on environmental issues and matters of anti-racism, decolonization, and ecological justice. [14]
Hedonism refers to the prioritization of pleasure in one's lifestyle, actions, or thoughts. The term can include a number of theories or practices across philosophy, art, and psychology, encompassing both sensory pleasure and more intellectual or personal pursuits, but can also be used in everyday parlance as a pejorative for the egoistic pursuit of short-term gratification at the expense of others.
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals. In other words, utilitarian ideas encourage actions that ensure the greatest good for the greatest number. Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different characterizations, the basic idea behind all of them is, in some sense, to maximize utility, which is often defined in terms of well-being or related concepts. For instance, Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, described utility thus:
That property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness ... [or] to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered.
Henry Sidgwick was an English utilitarian philosopher and economist and is best known in philosophy for his utilitarian treatise The Methods of Ethics. His work in economics has also had a lasting influence. He was the Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1883 until his death. He was one of the founders and first president of the Society for Psychical Research and a member of the Metaphysical Society and promoted the higher education of women. In 1875, with Millicent Garrett Fawcett, he co-founded Newnham College, a women-only constituent college of the University of Cambridge. It was the second Cambridge college to admit women, after Girton College. In 1856, Sidgwick joined the Cambridge Apostles intellectual secret society.
Richard Mervyn Hare, usually cited as R. M. Hare, was a British moral philosopher who held the post of White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford from 1966 until 1983. He subsequently taught for a number of years at the University of Florida. His meta-ethical theories were influential during the second half of the twentieth century.
In ethics, welfarism is a theory that well-being, what is good for someone or what makes a life worth living, is the only thing that has intrinsic value. In its most general sense, it can be defined as descriptive theory about what has value but some philosophers also understand welfarism as a moral theory, that what one should do is ultimately determined by considerations of well-being. The right action, policy or rule is the one leading to the maximal amount of well-being. In this sense, it is often seen as a type of consequentialism, and can take the form of utilitarianism.
John Jamieson Carswell Smart was a British-Australian philosopher who was appointed as an Emeritus Professor by the Australian National University. He worked in the fields of metaphysics, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and political philosophy. He wrote several entries for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Ethical intuitionism is a view or family of views in moral epistemology. It is foundationalism applied to moral knowledge, the thesis that some moral truths can be known non-inferentially. Such an epistemological view is by definition committed to the existence of knowledge of moral truths; therefore, ethical intuitionism implies cognitivism.
Utilitarianism is an 1861 essay written by English philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill, considered to be a classic exposition and defence of utilitarianism in ethics. It was originally published as a series of three separate articles in Fraser's Magazine in 1861 before it was collected and reprinted as a single work in 1863. The essay explains utilitarianism to its readers and addresses the numerous criticism against the theory during Mill's lifetime. It was heavily criticized upon publication; however, since then, Utilitarianism gained significant popularity and has been considered "the most influential philosophical articulation of a liberal humanistic morality that was produced in the nineteenth century."
Rational egoism is the principle that an action is rational if and only if it maximizes one's self-interest. As such, it is considered a normative form of egoism, though historically has been associated with both positive and normative forms. In its strong form, rational egoism holds that to not pursue one's own interest is unequivocally irrational. Its weaker form, however, holds that while it is rational to pursue self-interest, failing to pursue self-interest is not always irrational.
Act utilitarianism is a utilitarian theory of ethics that states that a person's act is morally right if and only if it produces the best possible results in that specific situation. Classical utilitarians, including Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Sidgwick, define happiness as pleasure and the absence of pain.
Average and total utilitarianism are variants of utilitarianism that seek to maximize the average or total amount of utility; following Henry Sidgwick's question, "Is it total or average happiness that we seek to make a maximum?". They are theories of population ethics, a philosophical field that deals with problems arising when our actions affect the number or identity of individuals born in the future.
British philosophy refers to the philosophical tradition of the British people. "The native characteristics of British philosophy are these: common sense, dislike of complication, a strong preference for the concrete over the abstract and a certain awkward honesty of method in which an occasional pearl of poetry is embedded".
The Methods of Ethics is a book on ethics first published in 1874 by the English philosopher Henry Sidgwick. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy indicates that The Methods of Ethics "in many ways marked the culmination of the classical utilitarian tradition." Noted moral and political philosopher John Rawls, writing in the Forward to the Hackett reprint of the 7th edition, says Methods of Ethics "is the clearest and most accessible formulation of ... 'the classical utilitarian doctrine'". Contemporary utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer has said that the Methods "is simply the best book on ethics ever written."
Roger Stephen Crisp is fellow and tutor in philosophy at St. Anne's College, Oxford. He holds the university posts of Professor of Moral Philosophy and Uehiro Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy. His work falls principally within the field of ethics, in particular metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. In addition, he is chairman of the Management Committee of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.
The philosophy of happiness is the philosophical concern with the existence, nature, and attainment of happiness. Some philosophers believe happiness can be understood as the moral goal of life or as an aspect of chance; indeed, in most European languages the term happiness is synonymous with luck. Thus, philosophers usually explicate on happiness as either a state of mind, or a life that goes well for the person leading it. Given the pragmatic concern for the attainment of happiness, research in psychology has guided many modern-day philosophers in developing their theories.
Negative utilitarianism is a form of negative consequentialism that can be described as the view that people should minimize the total amount of aggregate suffering, or that they should minimize suffering and then, secondarily, maximize the total amount of happiness. It can be considered as a version of utilitarianism that gives greater priority to reducing suffering than to increasing pleasure. This differs from classical utilitarianism, which does not claim that reducing suffering is intrinsically more important than increasing happiness. Both versions of utilitarianism hold that morally right and morally wrong actions depend solely on the consequences for overall aggregate well-being. "Well-being" refers to the state of the individual.
Tatjana Višak, often credited as Tatjana Visak, is a German philosopher specialising in ethics and political philosophy who is currently based in the Department of Philosophy and Business Ethics at the University of Mannheim. She is the author of the monographs Killing Happy Animals and Capacity for Welfare Across Species, and the editor, with the political theorist Robert Garner, of The Ethics of Killing Animals.
Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek is a Polish utilitarian philosopher and a university professor at the Institute of Philosophy at University of Łódź.
David Phillips is an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Houston. He is known for his works on ethics.