Candace Vogler

Candace Vogler is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the College at the University of Chicago.  She has authored two books, John Stuart Mill's Deliberative Landscape: An essay in moral psychology (Routledge, 2001) and Reasonably Vicious (Harvard University Press, 2002) and essays in ethics, social and political philosophy, philosophy and literature, cinema, psychoanalysis, gender studies, sexuality studies, and other areas.  Her research interests are in practical philosophy (particularly the strand of work in moral philosophy indebted to Elizabeth Anscombe), practical reason, Kant's ethics, Marx, and neo-Aristotelian naturalism.

CV (PDF)


Contact

office: Stuart Hall, Room 231-B
office phone 773/702-9745
email: vogue@uchicago.edu

Selected Publications

  • Modern Moral Philosophy Again: Isolating the Promulgation Problem (DOC)
  • Some Remarks on Robert Audi's The Good in the Right (DOC)
  • Anscombe on Practical Inference (DOC)
  • The Critical Limits of Embodiment: Disability's Criticism (with C.A. Breckenridge)
    Public Culture - Volume 13, Number 3, Fall 2001, pp. 349-357 (Link)
  • Introduction: Violence, Redemption, and the Liberal Imagination (with P. Markell)
    Public Culture - Volume 15, Number 1, Winter 2003, pp. 1-10 (Link)
  • Sex and Talk
    Critical Inquiry, Vol. 24, No. 2, Intimacy (Winter, 1998), pp. 328-365 (Link)
  • Social Imaginary, Ethics, and Methodological Individualism
    Public Culture - Volume 14, Number 3, Fall 2002, pp. 625-627 (Link)
  • Fourteen Sonnets for an Epidemic: Derek Jarman's The Angelic Conversation
    Public Culture 2006 18(1):23-52; (Link)
  • We Were Never in Paradise in Practical Rationality and Preference: Essays for David Gauthier Ed. Christopher W. Morris, Arthur Ripstein (Link)
  • XIV—Modern Moral Philosophy Again: Isolating the Promulgation Problem
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 106, Number 3, May 2006 , pp. 345-362(18) (Link)
  • The Moral of the Story
    Critical Inquiry Volume 34, Number 1, Autumn 2007 (Link)

Please see my CV (PDF) for a complete list of publications.

Selected Reviews by Candace Vogeler

  • Author(s) of Review: Candace Vogler
    Reviewed Work(s): Practical Induction by Elijah Millgram
    Mind, New Series, Vol. 109, No. 435 (Jul., 2000), pp. 630-634 (Link)

Selected Reviews of Candace Vogeler's Work

  • Author(s) of Review: Elijah Millgram
    Reviewed Work(s): John Stuart Mill's Deliberative Landscape by Candace Vogler
    Ethics, Vol. 112, No. 4 (Jul., 2002), pp. 880-883 (Link)
  • Author(s) of Review: Julia Driver
    Reviewed Work(s): Reasonably Vicious by Candace Vogler
    Ethics, Vol. 114, No. 4, Symposium on Terrorism, War, and Justice (Jul., 2004), pp. 845-848 (Link)

Recent Courses

21000. Introduction to Ethics
Open to college students. In this course, we will read, write, and think about central issues in moral philosophy. This survey course is designed to give a rapid introduction to philosophical ethics (largely in the Anglo-North American tradition (although not entirely as a product of Anglo-North American philosophers). We will begin with work by Immanuel Kant and Henry Sidgwick and conclude with important twentieth century work in metaethics and normative ethics (one thing that we will consider is the distinctions between metaethics, normative ethics, and the various fields united under the rubric 'applied ethics'). This course is intended as an introductory course in moral philosophy. Some prior work in philosophy is helpful, but not required. (A) _Candace Vogler . Spring 2005, Spring 2007.

21010/31010. Metaethics
Open to college and grad students. Prerequisites: PQ: one course in ethics. Why be moral? What sort of account can we give of the bases of ethical judgments? In this course we will read, write and think about foundational accounts of ethics. We will consider arguments to the effect that anyone who acts unethically thereby sins against reason, that a proper understanding of the human being as such shows that ethical life belongs to our nature, that rational agents or reasonable people will be bound by ethical or moral principles as those guides for conduct that might inform a social contract, and that anyone with his wits about him will be drawn toward ethical conduct as a matter of basic temperament. Over the course of our work, we will also encounter many arguments that none of these approaches suffices to provide a substantive foundation for ethics. Spring 2006.

21301. Moral Theory
Open to college students. Why be moral? Is there any principled distinction between matters of fact and matters of value? What is the character of obligation? What is a virtue? In this course we will read, think, and write about twentieth century Anglo-North American philosophical attempts to give a systematic account of morality. Winter 2004.

31000. Marx
Open to grad students and college students with consent of instructor. Prerequisites: A course in ethics or political philosophy. In this course, we read, write, and think about Marx's social and political philosophy with special emphasis on his materialism, his work on value, his account of forms of social life, and his sporadic treatment of the place of colonization in the development of capitalism. Throughout, we pay attention to accounts of the place of consciousness in Marx's explanations of social life. We consider some twentieth-century Marxist work at the conclusion of the term. Spring 2003.

51600. Topics in Contemporary Ethics: Agency & Practical Reason
Open to grad students. In this seminar we will read and discuss two manuscripts, both of which address questions of practical reason, rational agency, and ethics: Christine Korsgaard's Locke Lectures and Michael Thompson's book on practical reason, ethics, and agency. Thompson will pay a visit to discuss his work with us. Spring 2003.

51600. Topics in Contemporary Ethics
_Open to grad students. Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. Spring 2004.

51601. Topics in Ethics: Action-based work in ethics I
Open to grad students. This seminar will be conducted as two courses, focused on recent work in ethics, but grounded in work by Elizabeth Anscombe. In Winter, we will read several of Anscombe's essays and the whole of Intention. We will then turn to more recent work by Philippa Foot, Tom Pink, and Michael Thompson. In Spring, we will consider work by David Velleman, John McDowell, Iris Murdoch, Warren Quinn, Doug Lavin and Rosalind Hursthouse. Throughout, we will be concerned with the fate of one strand of neo-Aristotelian as a foundationalist project in moral philosophy. The Winter term course will serve as a prerequisite for the Spring term course. Winter 2007.

51602. Topics in Ethics: Action-based work in ethics II
Open to grad students. This seminar will be conducted as two courses, focused on recent work in ethics, but grounded in work by Elizabeth Anscombe. In Winter, we will read several of Anscombe's essays and the whole of Intention. We will then turn to more recent work by Philippa Foot, Tom Pink, and Michael Thompson. In Spring, we will consider work by David Velleman, John McDowell, Iris Murdoch, Warren Quinn, Doug Lavin and Rosalind Hursthouse. Throughout, we will be concerned with the fate of one strand of neo-Aristotelian as a foundationalist project in moral philosophy. The Winter term course will serve as a prerequisite for the Spring term course. Spring 2007.

51806. Philosophical Literature
Open to grad students. Some literary texts are, in an important sense, philosophical - not because they provide examples or otherwise illustrate philosophical themes, but because they engage in a particular kind of philosophical work. We will read, write and think about texts of this kind by Geoffrey Chaucer, Edgar Allen Poe and Flannery O'Connor. We are specifically concerned with the way these writers engage the ethical, since for each of them it is at least a question what might characterize the ethical in the first place. Weekly writing and daily conversation will be essential to the success of the seminar. Permission of the instructors required - contact jsch@uchicago.edu or vogue@uchicago.edu. Co-taught with Jay Schleusener, Dept. of English, and M. Miller . Winter 2005.

59900. Contemporary Philosophy Workshop
Open to grad students. This course meets bi-weekly over three quarters. Autumn 2003.