Bart Schultz (born August 9, 1951) is an American philosopher who is Senior Lecturer in Humanities (Philosophy) and Director of the Civic Knowledge Project at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
.
Career
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.
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. Schultz's major books are ''Henry Sidgwick, Eye of the Universe'' (Cambridge, 2004)
and ''The Happiness Philosophers: The Lives and Works of the Great Utilitarians'' (Princeton, 2017).
In 2004 ''Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe'' won the American Philosophical Society's Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History.
He has also written and lectured on the philosophies of
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
,
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
, 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). 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.
In 2013, he was honored with the PUSH Excel Outstanding Educator Award by the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
Schultz is on the Editorial Board of ''Utilitas'', the leading professional journal of utilitarian studies, and on the Board of Directors of PLATO (Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization), the main professional group in the U.S. devoted to precollegiate philosophy.
He is currently developing, with such organizations as the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, an extensive program called the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Initiative, which will commemorate the work of Dr. King on the 50th anniversary of his tragic assassination.
Schultz’s philosophical orientation is complex, highly interdisciplinary, and difficult to describe. He has been deeply influenced by such figures as
John Rawls
John Bordley Rawls (; February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American moral, legal and political philosopher in the liberal tradition. Rawls received both the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in 1 ...
,
J.B. Schneewind,
Martha Nussbaum
Martha Craven Nussbaum (; born May 6, 1947) is an American philosopher and the current Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, where she is jointly appointed in the law school and the philosoph ...
,
Alan Donagan,
Richard Rorty
Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher. Educated at the University of Chicago and Yale University, he had strong interests and training in both the history of philosophy and in contemporary analytic phi ...
,
Derek Parfit
Derek Antony Parfit (; 11 December 1942 – 1 or 2 January 2017) was a British philosopher who specialised in personal identity, rationality, and ethics. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential moral philosophers of ...
,
Amartya Sen
Amartya Kumar Sen (; born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher, who since 1972 has taught and worked in the United Kingdom and the United States. Sen has made contributions to welfare economics, social choice theory, econom ...
,
Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher, currently the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He specialises in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a secular, ...
,
Angela Davis
Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, philosopher, academic, scholar, and author. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A feminist and a Marxist, Davis was a longtime member of ...
,
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...
,
Michelle Alexander
Michelle Alexander (born October 7, 1967) is an American writer and civil rights activist. She is best known for her 2010 book '' The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness''. Since 2018, she has been an opinion columnist ...
,
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Said (; , ; 1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies.Robert Young, ''White ...
,
Roger Crisp
Roger Stephen Crisp (born 23 March 1961) 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 wit ...
,
Dale Jamieson
Dale Jamieson (born 1947) is Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy at New York University, a scholar of environmental ethics and animal rights, and an analyst of climate change discourse. He also serves as a faculty affiliate for the ...
,
Elizabeth S. Anderson
Elizabeth Secor Anderson (born December 5, 1959) is an American philosopher. She is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan and specializes in ...
,
Danielle Allen
Danielle Susan Allen (born November 3, 1971) is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. She is also the Director of the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics. Prior to joining the faculty at Harvard in 2015, Allen ...
and Timuel D. Black. Best known for his work on the 19th-century philosopher
Henry Sidgwick
Henry Sidgwick (; 31 May 1838 – 28 August 1900) was an English utilitarian philosopher and economist. He was the Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1883 until his death, and is best known in philos ...
, 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
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 diversity and inclusion.
Books
* ''Henry Sidgwick, Eye of the Universe'', Cambridge University Press, 2004
* ''The Happiness Philosophers: The Lives and Works of the Great Utilitarians'', Princeton University Press, 2017
See also
*
Utilitarianism
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals.
Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different charact ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schultz, Bart
1951 births
Living people
21st-century American philosophers
Analytic philosophers
American atheists
Atheist philosophers
Utilitarians
Consequentialists
University of Chicago faculty