The German philosopher Immanuel Kant is notorious for claiming that, because animals do not have reason, they have no moral claim on us. Christine Korsgaard is among the most distinguished and influential Kantian philosophers of the current era. She is, however, keenly interested in the moral standing of animals and the nature of our relations to them. She argues that animals are not as vastly different from humans as Kant believed and that they have far greater moral claims on us than Kant believed. She does agree we differ from them, but not in ways that imply they lack moral relevance for us.
Professor Korsgaard is currently Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. She is the author of Self-Constitution, Identity, and Integrity and The Sources of Normativity, an expanded version of her Tanner Lectures in 1992. In addition, she has published several collections of essays and a goodly number of articles and essays. She has received honorary degrees from the University of Illinois and the University of Gronigen. She has also been President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Society and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Last Updated: October 17, 2016
