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Yale Professor Shelly Kagan to Lecture at W&L

Shelly Kagan, the Clark Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, will give a talk at Washington and Lee University on Monday, March 11, at 5:30 p.m. in Northen Auditorium, Leyburn Library. The lecture is part of the Living Philosophy Series sponsored by W&L’s Philosophy Department.

The title of Kagan’s talk, which is free and open to the public, is “Why is Death Bad for You?” His latest book, published in 2012, is titled “Death” (as is a popular class he teaches at Yale.) A book sale will be held after the talk.

Kagan is the author of four books including “The Geometry of Desert” (Oxford, 2012); “Death” (Yale, 2012); and “Normative Ethics” (Westview, 1998). He is also the author and editor of many articles including “Do I Make a Difference?” (Philosophy & Public Affairs, Spring 2011); “Well-Being as Enjoying the Good” (Philosophical Perspectives, 2009); and “The Grasshopper, Aristotle, Bob Adams and Me,” in “Metaphysics and the Good,” (Oxford, 2009).

According to Kagan, “My main research interests lie in moral philosophy, in particular normative ethics. Much of my work centers on the debate between consequentialism and deontological moral theories, with publications on the nature of well-being, moral desert, utopia and the connections between Kantianism and consequentialism.”

Kagan holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. from Princeton.  He previously taught at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Kagan’s talk is sponsored by the Morton Endowment for Philosophy and Religion.

News Contact:
Julie Cline
News Writer
jcline@wlu.edu
540-458-8954