Howison Lectures in Philosophy

Professor Howison held the reasoned conviction that this world to its very depth is kindred to the human spirit; that it is a community of free persons, finite and infinite, sustained by the vision of the Perfect; and all his great powers were directed to awaken in others a loyalty to these ideas. And those, it would seem, would most speak from a foundation in his memory who were able to share with him this high purpose and conviction.

— Founding donors of the Howison Lectures in Philosophy

Past lectures

• 1922 — William Ernest Hocking — "Naturalism and the Belief in Purpose"; "Intuitionism and Idealism"; "Realism and Mysticism"
• 1923 — Arthur Oncken Lovejoy — "The Discontinuities of Evolution"
• 1925 — William Pepperell Montague — "Time and the Fourth Dimension"
• 1925 — Ralph Barton Perry — "A Modernist View of National Ideals"
• 1926 — Clarence Irving Lewis — "The Pragmatic Element in Knowledge"
• 1927 — Evander Bradley McGilvary — "Space and Time"
• 1929 — Robert Mark Wenley
• 1930 — James Hayden Tufts — "Recent Ethical Theories"
• 1931 — John Dewey — "Thought and Context"
• 1932 — Walter Goodnow Everett — "The Uniqueness of Man"
• 1933 — F. C. S. Schiller — "Theory and Practice"
• 1934 — G. Watts Cunningham — "Perspective and Contact in the Meaning Situation"
• 1935 — Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge — "An Approach to a Theory of Nature"
• 1936 — Henry W. Stuart — "Knowledge and Self-Consciousness"
• 1937 — Heinrich Gomperz — "Limits of Cognition and Exigencies of Action"
• 1941 — George Holland Sabine — "Social Studies and Objectivity"
• 1941 — George Edward Moore — "Certainty"
• 1943 — Charles Montague Bakewell — "Philosophy Goes to War"
• 1944 — Curt John Ducasse — "The Method of Knowledge in Philosophy"
• 1945 — Harvey Gates Townsend — "The History of Townsend"
• 1946 — Wilmon Henry Sheldon
• 1947 — Alexander Meiklejohn — "Inclinations and Obligations"
• 1949 — George Boas — "The Acceptance of Time"
• 1954 — Brand Blanshard — "The Impasse of Ethics - and a Way Out"
• 1954 — Gilbert Ryle — "Some Problems in the Theory of Meaning"
• 1954 — Walter Terence Stace — "Mysticism and Human Reason"
• 1956 — Józef Maria Bocheński — "Logic and Philosophy"
• 1957 — Kurt von Fritz — "Aristotle's Contribution to the Theory and Practice of Historiography"
• 1957 — John Wisdom — "Paradox and Discovery"
• 1959 — Willard Van Orman Quine — "The Assuming of Objects"
• 1960 — Ernest Nagel — "The Cognitive Status of Theories"
• 1961 — Gabriel Marcel — "Man, Techniques, and Meta-Techniques"
• 1963 — Henry H. Price — "Causes of Belief and Reasons for Belief"
• 1963 — Peter Geach — "Assertion"
• 1963 — Elizabeth Anscombe — "The Intentionality of Sensation: A Grammatical Feature"
• 1964 — Carl G. Hempel — "Problems of Induction"
• 1968 — Stuart Hampshire — "Sincerity and Uncertainty"
• 1971 — Gunther Patzing — "Truth, Determinism and Uncertainty"
• 1977 — Saul Kripke — "Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language: An Exposition"
• 1977 — Peter F. Strawson — "Perception and Its Objects"; "Reference and Its Roots"
• 1978 — Robert Nozick — "The Identity of the Self. Why is there Something Rather than Nothing?"
• 1979 — Patrick Suppes — "The Limits of Rationality"
• 1979 — John Rawls — "Constructivist Moral Conceptions"
• 1979 — David Kellogg Lewis — "Causal Explanation"
• 1980 — Michel Foucault — "Truth and Subjectivity"
• 1981 — Hilary Putnam — "The Transcendence of Reason": 1) "Why There Isn't a Ready-Made World"; 2) "Why Reason Can't Be Naturalized"
• 1983 — Richard Rorty — "Relativism"
• 1984 — Gregory Vlastos — "Socrates' Disavowal of Knowledge"; "The Socratic Fallacy"
• 1985 — Nelson Goodman — "A Reconception of Philosophy"
• 1986 — Michael A. E. Dummett — "The Justification of Logical Laws"
• 1987 — Thomas Nagel — "Moral Conflict and Political Legitimacy"
• 1988 — Bernard Williams — "Philosophy and the Fragments of Enlightenment"
• 1988 — Jürgen Habermas
• 1994 — Noam Chomsky — "Naturalism and Dualism in the Study of Language and Mind"
• 1996 — Myles Burnyeat — "Freedom, Anger, Tranquility - An Archaeology of Feeling"; "Ancient Freedoms"; "Anger and Revenge"; "Happiness and Tranquility"
• 1999 — Nancy Cartwright — "The Dappled World"
• 2000 — Michael Frede — "On Aristotle's Notion of the Soul"
• 2002 — Ronald M. Dworkin — "Truth, Interpretation, and the Point of Moral Philosophy"
• 2002 — Stanley Cavell — "Philosophy the Day After Tomorrow: Moments in Nietzsche, Jane Austen, et cetera."; "The Wittgensteinian Event
• 2004 — David Kaplan — "The Meaning of 'Ouch' and 'Oops'"
• 2005 — Judith Jarvis Thomson — "Normativity"
• 2006 — John McDowell — "Intention in Action"
• 2007 — Fred Dretske — "What We See"
• 2007 — T. M. Scanlon — "The Ethics of Blame"
• 2009 — John Perry — "Thinking and Talking About the Self"
• 2010 — Ian Hacking — "Proof, Truth, Hands, and Mind"
• 2013 — Robert Brandom — "Reason, Genealogy, and the Hermeneutics of Magnanimity"
• 2014 — Sarah Broadie — "The Theoretical Impulse in Plato and Aristotle"
• 2015 — Kwame Anthony Appiah — "The Philosophy of "As If""
• 2016 — Christine M. Korsgaard — "Animal Selves and the Good"
• 2017 — Gisela Striker — "Cicero’s De Officiis – Stoic Ethics for Non-Stoics"
• 2018 — Joseph Raz — "Identity and Social Bonds"
• 2019 — Philip Kitcher — "Progress in the Sciences and in the Arts"