Justin Broackes
Associate Professor of Philosophy:
Philosophy
Phone: +1 401 863 3183
Justin_Broackes@brown.edu
I work on the history of 17th- and 18th-century philosophy, as well as topics in present-day Metaphysics and the Theory of Perception.
Biography
I did my doctorate at Oxford in the philosophy of mind and language, though I was also developing interests in Descartes, Locke and Hume. Before moving to Brown, I taught at Oxford, as a Fellow of Oriel College.
My present research is on issues in metaphysics and the theory of perception, and their connections with the history of the subject. Special areas of interest include: Theory of Color and Color-Perception, from the Ancient Greeks to the present; Color-Blindness; and the Notion of Substance, and what became of that idea in the 17th and 18th centuries and after. In addition, I am working on a book on Iris Murdoch's The Sovereignty of Good and am editing a collection of essays on her work.
I have recently been a Visiting Professor in Paris, in the Department of Cognitive Studies at the Ecole normale supérieure, and at the Institut Jean Nicod.
Interests
In addition to my work on Color Blindness, I have two projects on Iris Murdoch, a major philosophical voice in the 1950s and 1960s. Arguing that neither analytic linguistic philosophy nor Continental existentialism did justice to the nature of morality, Murdoch developed an impressive and influential third approach, though her founding role is perhaps too little appreciated. I am editor of a volume of essays on Murdoch's work, with contributions from John Bayley, Martha Nussbaum, Peter Conradi, Maria Antonaccio and others. And I am writing a Commentary on her book The Sovereignty of Good. A third and longer term project (begun with a 2005 paper) is to examine the battles and confusions over the Aristotelian notion of Substance since the 17th and 18th centuries--and to see how much of that notion is worth rehabilitating.
Degrees
D. Phil, Oxford University
Awards
1995–99 Robert Gale Noyes Assistant Professor of the Humanities, Brown University
2003–04 Visiting Professor, École normale supérieure, rue d'Ulm, Paris
Affiliations
Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy (Committee Member)
Boston Area Colloquium in Early Modern Philosophy
Mind Association
Aristotelian Society
Funded Research
N/A
