Anton Ford

Anton Ford
Associate Professor
Stuart Hall, Room 224
Office Hours: Spring Quarter: by appointment
773.702.0827
University of Pittsburgh PhD (2008); Harvard University BA (1999)
Teaching at UChicago since 2007
Research Interests: Action Theory, Ethics, Political Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy

Anton Ford joined the faculty in 2007 and is an Associate Professor in Philosophy. His primary research and teaching interests are in Practical Philosophy, understood broadly to include Action Theory, Ethics, and Political Philosophy. Figures of special interest include Anscombe, Aristotle and Marx.

Selected Publications

The Province of Human Agency Noûs 52:3 (2018): 697–720.

“The Progress of the Deed,” in Process, Action and Experience, ed. Rowland Stout (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 

“Third Parties to Compromise,” in NOMOS: Compromise, ed. Jack Knight (New York: New York University Press, 2018). 

The Representation of Action,” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements 80 (2017): 217-233.

On What is Front of Your Nose,” Philosophical Topics 44:1 (2016): 141-161.

The Arithmetic of Intention,” The American Philosophical Quarterly 52:2 (2015): 129–143.

Action and Passion,” Philosophical Topics 42:1 (2014): 13–42.  

Is Agency a Power of Self-Movement? Inquiry 56:6 (2013): 597–610.

Praktische Wahrnehmung,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 61:3 (2013): 403–418.

“Action and Generality,” in Essays on Anscombe’s Intention, ed. Anton Ford, Jennifer Hornsby and Frederick Stoutland (Harvard University Press, 2011).

Essays on Anscombe’s Intention, edited with Jennifer Hornsby and Frederick Stoutland (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011) ed. Anton Ford, Jennifer Hornsby and Frederick Stoutland (Harvard University Press, 2011).

“The Just and the Fine: A Reply to Irwin,” Classical Philology, Vol. 105, No. 4, 2010, 396–402.

Recent Courses

PHIL 21423 Introduction to Marx

(FNDL 21805)

This introduction to Marx’s thought will divide into three parts: in the first, we will consider Marx‘s theory of history; in the second, his account of capitalism; and in third, his conception of the state. (A)

2023-2024 Autumn

PHIL 25510 Know How

What is it to know how to do something? And how, if at all, is it different from knowing that something is the case? The now-familiar distinction between "knowing-how" and "knowing-that" was first discussed by Gilbert Ryle in his 1949 book, The Concept of Mind. Though it soon became a standard piece of philosophical equipment, the Rylean distinction has recently come under vigorous attack. As time permits the course will examine (i) Ryle's original treatment of the topic and its development by Kenny and others; (ii) the recent critical discussion of this; and (iii) some ancient and modern sources of the idea that there is a kind of productive power—exemplified by, say, the "art" of medicine, or the "craft" of carpentry—that is not, or not simply, a knowledge of facts, but that nevertheless deserves to be called knowledge. (A)

 

2021-2022 Winter

PHIL 21491/31491 Anscombe’s Intention

G. E. M. Anscombe’s 1957 monograph, Intention, inaugurated the discipline known as the philosophy of action. We will study that work with occasional reference to the secondary literature. (A)

2021-2022 Winter

PHIL 21423 Introduction to Marx

(FNDL 21805)

This introduction to Marx’s thought will divide into three parts: in the first, we will consider Marx‘s theory of history; in the second, his account of capitalism; and in third, his conception of the state. (A)

2021-2022 Autumn

PHIL 23004 Aristotle’s Practical Philosophy

(FNDL 23004)

This course will survey Aristotle’s ethics and politics with a view to understanding their relation to one another.  

2020-2021 Spring

PHIL 22220/32220 Marx’s Capital, Volume I

(FNDL 22220)

We will study the first volume of Karl Marx’s Capital, attempting to understand the book on its own terms and with minimal reference to secondary literature. (A) (I)

 

2020-2021 Spring
Category
Social/Political Philosophy

PHIL 54123 Intentionality in Mind and Action

This will be a seminar on the philosophical notion of intentionality as it bears on questions about our ability to represent the world, on the one hand, and to change it, on the other.  Brentano famously suggested that “intentionality” – the power of our minds to be “directed at” objects, in a way that allows it to be in states that are “of” or “about” those objects – is the fundamental mark of the mental as such.  Brentano’s work inspired a phenomenological tradition that sought to investigate the various faculties of the mind by investigating the distinctive kinds of “objects” at which they are directed and the distinctive manners in which they present these objects.  Our aim will be, first, to survey some key contributions to this tradition, with particular attention to their claim that the fundamental way to investigate the mind is by investigating its several forms of intentionality, and second, to think about the continuing relevance of this idea to contemporary problems about mind and action.  The course will begin historically, with readings from Brentano, Husserl, and Sartre. We will then turn to the reception, development, and criticism of this tradition within analytic philosophy by such figures as Chisholm, Kenny, Anscombe, Geach, Quine, Searle, Davidson, McDowell, Travis, and Crane. In the latter part of the course, we will divide our time roughly equally between topics in practical and theoretical philosophy. (III)

Graduate students in fields other than Philosophy must have instructor’s permission to enroll.

 

2020-2021 Winter
Category
Philosophy of Action
Philosophy of Mind

PHIL 21423 Introduction to Marx

(FNDL 21805)

This introduction to Marx’s thought will divide into three parts: in the first, we will consider Marx‘s theory of history; in the second, his account of capitalism; and in third, his conception of the state. (A)

2019-2020 Winter

PHIL 55912 Aristotle and Marx

In the preface to the first edition of Capital, Marx describes his theoretical standpoint as one from which “the development of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history.” With a view to understanding Marx’s theoretical standpoint we will “go back,” in Marx’s words, “to the great investigator who was the first to analyze the value-form, like so many other forms of thought, society and nature. I mean Aristotle.” Aristotle’s influence on Marx is well-known and frequently attested by Marx himself. We will explore that influence as it manifests itself in Marx’s views on a variety of topics—e.g. on human nature and history; on labor, leisure and the good life; on slavery and freedom; on value and exchange; on property and wealth; on justice; and on alienation.

2019-2020 Autumn

PHIL 20215/30215 The End of Life

(SCTH 30215)

Aristotle taught that happiness, or eudaimonia, is the end of human life, in the sense that it is what we should strive for. But, in another sense, death is the end of life. This course will explore how these two “ends” – happiness and death – are related to each other. But it will do so in the context of a wider set of concerns. For, it is not only our individual lives that come to an end: ways of life, cultural traditions, civilizations and epochs of human history end. We now live with the fear that human life on earth might end. How are we to think about, and live well in relation to, ends such as these? Readings from Aristotle, Marx, Engels, Freud, Heidegger, and Arendt.

 

Graduates: By permission of instructor.

2018-2019 Spring

PHIL 53021 Knowledge of Agency

The title of this course is ambiguous. It might be thought to refer, either, to the knowledge of which the agent is the object, or, alternatively, to the knowledge of which the agent is the subject. This course will consider how these two forms of knowledge are related to each other. Its guiding conjecture will be that the knowledge of which the agent is the subject is prior in the order of understanding to that of which the agent is the object. After considering Ryle's account of "knowledge-how" and Anscombe's investigation of the reason-requesting question "Why?", we will widen our focus to consider the general tendency of analytic philosophers to theorize human agency in terms of the way that agency is explained, rather than from the standpoint of the agent in the midst of action. This research seminar will presuppose some familiarity with the philosophy of action. (III) 

2018-2019 Winter
Category
Philosophy of Action
Epistemology

For full list of Anton Ford's courses back to the 2012-13 academic year, see our searchable course database.