Jeffrey Lee Stout (born September 11, 1950) is an American religious studies scholar who is Professor Emeritus of Religion at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

. He is a member of the Department of Religion, and is associated with the departments of Philosophy and Politics, the Center for the Study of Religion, and the Center for Human Values. His works focus on the possibility of ethical discourse in a religiously pluralistic society. He served as president of the

American Academy of Religion The American Academy of Religion (AAR) is the world's largest association of scholarly method, scholars in the List of academic disciplines, field of religious studies and related topics. It is a nonprofit member association, serving as a profes ...

in 2007.

Life and career

Stout was born on September 11, 1950, in Trenton,

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

. He graduated from

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

in 1972. Since obtaining his

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

degree in 1976 from

, Stout has remained there as Professor of Religion. He is former chair of the Committee for Film Studies at Princeton. He was also president of the

in 2007. His two best-known books, for both of which he won the American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence, are ''Ethics After Babel'' (1989) and ''Democracy and Tradition'' (2003). His most recent book, ''Blessed Are the Organized: Grassroots Democracy in America'' (2010), takes an ethnographic turn, investigating the engaged democratic practices that he has endorsed in his previous work. He has received Princeton University’s Graduate Mentoring Award (2009) and the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching (2010). He plans to retire in July 2018. He has also delivered Gifford Lectures in May 2017, with the title "Religion Unbound: Ideals and Powers from Cicero to King", and plans to expand the materials into a book.

Theory

He has championed what he calls "the moral tradition of

democracy Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation (" direct democracy"), or to choose gov ...

" as a "background of agreement" shared by participants in the political/social debates taking place in America today. This is his answer to such thinkers as

Alasdair MacIntyre Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (; born 12 January 1929) is a Scottish-American philosopher who has contributed to moral and political philosophy as well as history of philosophy and theology. MacIntyre's '' After Virtue'' (1981) is one of the most ...

and Stanley Hauerwas who believe that participants in such debates do not share enough common ground to prevent their arguments from being intractable. Stout has been influenced by

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 ...

and more recently Robert Brandom and, albeit with qualifications, aligns himself with the school of

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

known as American pragmatism.

References

External links

An Interview with Jeffrey Stout Part I
an
Part II
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stout, Jeffrey 1950 births 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century atheists American atheists American male non-fiction writers American religion academics Brown University alumni Living people Pragmatists Princeton University alumni Princeton University faculty 21st-century American male writers