Elizabeth S. Anderson

From Philosopedia

Elizabeth S. Anderson (5 December 1959 - )

Anderson presently is the John Rawls Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

She studied at Swarthmore College (1977-1981) and received her B.A. (High Honors) in Philosophy with a minor in Economics, 1981. She then studied at Harvard (1981-1987) and received her A.M. (1984) and Ph. D. (1987). She has been a teaching fellow at Harvard (1983-1985), a visiting instructor in philosophy at Swarthmore (1985-1986), and a member of the University of Michigan's Philosophy Department since 1987.

Anderson's areas of specialization include Epistemology, Ethics, Feminist Theory, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, and Social and Political Philosophy.

In addition to numerous published articles, she has written Value in Ethics and in Economics (Harvard University Press, 1993).

In Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life (Oxford, 2007), Anderson wrote an essay, "If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?" In the essay she asks if atheists are arrogant intellectuals, people who are antagonistic to organized religions, people who lack morality, people who believe that "anything goes" if there is no god? Not at all, she counters: "If we take the evidence for theism with utmost seriousness, we will find ourselves committed to the proposition that the most heinous acts are permitted." She gives a lengthy list of the atrocities sanctioned by Scripture, both the Old and New Testaments. Hard-core fundamentalists who accept biblical inerrancy should be appalled by blood-curdling accounts of such an evil, sadistic God. Christopher Hitchens commends her in his The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever (Da Capo Press, 2007).

Anderson has described herself:

* I am Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Rawls Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies. I teach courses in ethics, social and political philosophy, philosophy of the social sciences, and feminist theory. Within these fields, my research has focused on democratic theory, equality in political philosophy and American law, racial integration, the ethical limits of markets, theories of value and rational choice (alternatives to consequentialism and economic theories of rational choice), the philosophies of John Stuart Mill and John Dewey, and feminist epistemology and philosophy of science.

Dr. Anderson resides in the Ann Arbor, Michigan, area.