The Department of Philosophy is pleased to announce that Daniel Jacobson, currently Professor of Philosophy at University of Michigan and founder of Michigan’s Freedom and Flourishing Project, will join the department as the first holder of the Bruce D. Benson endowed Professorship. He will be a Professor of Philosophy in the department, and will also serve as director of the Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization here at CU-Boulder, starting in the Fall of 2020.
Daniel Jacobson received his BA from Yale in 1984 and his PhD in 1994 from the University of Michigan. He works on a range of topics in ethics, moral psychology, aesthetics, and the moral and political philosophy of J. S. Mill. He has published extensively on issues concerning sentimentalism, the philosophy of emotion, and freedom of speech. Jacobson was Project Leader of The Science of Ethics, a three-year project funded by the John Templeton Foundation, and he originated the view that has become known as “immoralism" in the philosophy of art. His essay, “Utilitarianism without Consequentialism: The Case of John Stuart Mill” was chosen by The Philosophers’ Annual as one of the ten best philosophy articles published in 2008. Jacobson is co-editor (with Justin D’Arms) of the volume, Moral Psychology and Human Agency: Philosophical Essays on the Science of Ethics (Oxford University Press). Jacobson and D’Arms are currently working on a collaborative book project, Rational Sentimentalism, and have published a series of articles developing their view. Jacobson has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, and the Princeton University Center for Human Values.
