Helga Varden | |
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Education | University of Toronto (PhD) University of Tromsø (MA) LSE (MSc) Newcastle University (BA) |
Awards | William and Flora Hewlett Grant (2012-13) IVR Prize for Young Scholars (2007) George Paxton Young Memorial Prize (2005) Markus Herz Award (2005) Research Council of Norway scholarship (2004-5) Fulbright Fellowship (2000) |
Era | 21st-century philosophy |
Region | Western philosophy |
School | Kantian philosophy |
Institutions | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |
Thesis | The Liberal Ideal of Political Obligations: The Lockean Voluntarist vs. Kant’s Non-Voluntarist Ideal of Political Obligations (2006) |
Doctoral advisor | Arthur Ripstein |
Other academic advisors | Gopal Sreenivasan Sergio Tenenbaum Daniel Weinstock Sophia Moreau |
Main interests | legal, political and feminist philosophy |
Website | https://helgavarden.com/ |
Helga Varden is a Norwegian-American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy and Gender and Women Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was Brady Distinguished Visiting Professor in Ethics and Civic Life at Northwestern University between 2014-2015. She is known for her works on Kantian philosophy. [1] [2] [3]
Helga Varden is a professor in philosophy (home department), in gender and women studies, and in political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Varden’s main research interests are in Kant's practical philosophy as well as legal, political and feminist philosophy. In addition to her book— Sex, Love, and Gender: A Kantian Theory (OUP 2020)—she has published on a range of classical philosophical issues, including Kant’s answer to the murderer at the door, private property, political obligations, and political legitimacy, as well as on applied issues such as terrorism, care relations, privacy, poverty, and our moral responsibilities for animals. [4]
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential and controversial figures in modern Western philosophy.
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Kantian ethics refers to a deontological ethical theory developed by German philosopher Immanuel Kant that is based on the notion that: "It is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be considered good without limitation except a good will." The theory was developed in the context of Enlightenment rationalism. It states that an action can only be moral if (i) it is motivated by a sense of duty and (ii) its maxim may be rationally willed a universal, objective law.
Paul Walter Franks is the Robert F. and Patricia Ross Weis Professor of Philosophy and Judaic Studies at Yale University. He graduated with his PhD from Harvard University in 1993. Franks' dissertation, entitled "Kant and Hegel on the Esotericism of Philosophy", was supervised by Stanley Cavell and won the Emily and Charles Carrier Prize for a Dissertation in Moral Philosophy at Harvard University. He completed his B.A and M.A, in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford. Prior to this, Franks received his general education at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle, and studied classical rabbinic texts at Gateshead Talmudical College.
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Barbara Herman is the Griffin Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles Department of Philosophy. A well-known interpreter of Kant's ethics, Herman works on moral philosophy, the history of ethics, and social and political philosophy. Among her many honors and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship (1985-1986) and election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1995).
Richard L. Velkley is an American philosopher and Celia Scott Weatherhead Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University. Velkley is known for his expertise on Kant, Rousseau, and post-Kantian philosophy. He is a former associate editor of The Review of Metaphysics (1997–2006) and a former president of the Metaphysical Society of America (2017–18).
Sex, Love, and Gender: A Kantian Theory is a 2020 book by Helga Varden in which the author tries to apply Kantian thought to subjects such as philosophy of love and philosophy of sex.