Julia Driver (born 1961) is professor of
philosophy
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
and holder of the Darrell K. Royal Chair in Ethics and American Society at the
University of Texas, Austin. She is a specialist in
moral philosophy
Ethics is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches include normative ethics, applied et ...
.
Education and career
She received her Ph.D. in philosophy at
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...
in 1990 under the supervision of
Susan R. Wolf. She received her BA from the
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...
in 1983.
Before moving to Texas in 2019, she taught at
Washington University in St. Louis,
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College ( ) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the America ...
,
Virginia Tech
The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, commonly referred to as Virginia Tech (VT), is a Public university, public Land-grant college, land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States ...
, and
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn in New York City, United States. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls nearly 14,000 students on a campus in the Midwood and Flatbush sections of Brooklyn as of fall ...
of the City University of New York. She and her husband philosopher Roy Sorensen are also professorial fellows at
University of St Andrews
The University of St Andrews (, ; abbreviated as St And in post-nominals) is a public university in St Andrews, Scotland. It is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest of the four ancient universities of Scotland and, f ...
.
She has received a Laurance S. Rockefeller Fellowship from
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
, NEH Fellowship, and an HLA Hart Fellowship at Oxford University. She is presently co-editor of the journal ''Ethics''.
Philosophical work
She is the author of ''Uneasy Virtue'', ''Consequentialism'', and ''Ethics: The Fundamentals'', as well as many articles in ethics and moral psychology. She is the leading proponent of a consequentialist approach to virtue theory. According to Driver, the virtues are character traits that systematically produce good consequences. Her proposal differs from that of many other theories as she argues that virtue does not always require knowledge. Indeed, virtue can at times be impeded by knowledge.
[Driver, Julia. “The Virtues of Ignorance.” The Journal of Philosophy 86, no. 7 (1989): 373–84. https://doi.org/10.2307/2027146.]
In 2015, her book ''Consequentialism'' was translated by Iranian philosopher Shirzad Peik Herfeh into
Persian.
See also
*
Consequentialism
In moral philosophy, consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for judgement about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from a ...
*
List of American philosophers
American philosophy is the activity, corpus, and tradition of philosophers affiliated with the United States. The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' notes that while it lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can neverthe ...
References
External links
Washington University bio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Driver, Julia
Living people
21st-century American philosophers
Washington University in St. Louis faculty
Johns Hopkins University alumni
University of Texas at Austin alumni
Brooklyn College faculty
Virginia Tech faculty
Dartmouth College faculty
1961 births