Catherine Wilson

Distinguished Professor of Philosophy

Andrew Heiskell Research Scholar

Ph.D. Princeton University
B.Phil. University of Oxford
B.A. Yale University

Curriculum Vitae

Research Interests

17th and 18th Century History and Philosophy of Science

Moral and Social Theory

Philosophy of Literature

Courses Recently Taught

Biology and Morality (Spring 2008)

Empiricism: Bacon to Hume (Fall 2007)

Egalitarianism: For & Against (Spring 2007)

Rationalists (Fall 2006)

Evolution and Ethics (Spring 2006)

Materialism, Politics and Morals in 17th Century Philosophy (Fall 2005)

Representative Publications

Moral Animals: Ideals and Constraints in Moral Theory. Oxford University Press, 2004.

Descartes's Meditations: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 2003.

The Invisible World: Early Modern Philosophy and the Invention of the Microscope. Princeton University Press, 1995. 2nd ed. (paperback) 1997.

Leibniz's Metaphysics: A Historical and Comparative Study. Princeton University Press/Manchester University Press, 1989.

"What is the Importance of Descartes's Sixth Meditation?" Accepted for publication in Philosophica 74 (2006).

"Evolutionary Ethics." (12,000 words) To appear in Handbook of the Philosophy of Biology, ed. M. Matthen and C. Stephens, Elsevier, 2006.

"Love of God and Love of Creatures: The Astell-Masham Debate," History of Philosophy Quarterly, 21 ( 2004).

"Simone de Beauvoir and Human Dignity." In The Legacy of Simone de Beauvoir, edited by Emily Grosholz, Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 90-114.

"Kant and Leibniz," Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, 2004.

"Epicureanism in Early Modern Philosophy: Leibniz and his Contemporaries," in Brad Inwood and Jon Miller, eds., Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 90-115.

"Capability and Language in the Novels of Tarjei Vesaas" Philosophy and Literature 27 (2003) pp. 21-39.

"A Humean Argument for Benevolence to Strangers," Monist 86:3 on Moral Distance, edited by Deen Chatterjee., (2003) p. 454-468.

"The Role of a Merit Principle in Distributive Justice," Journal of Ethics 7 (2003) pp. 1-38.

"Morphogenesis, Organisation, Teleology," Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome, 2003.

"Corpuscular Effluvia: Between Imagination and Experiment," in Claus Zittel and Wolfgang Detel eds., Ideals and Cultures of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe/Wissensideale und Wissenskulturen in der frühen Neuzeit. Concepts, Methods, Historical Conditions and Social Impact. 2 vols., Frankfurt, Akademie-Verlag 2002, pp. 161-184.

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