Timothy Chappell
Professor of Philosophy
Director, The Open University Ethics Centre

Timothy Chappell was born in Bury, Lancashire, in 1964. After school he spent 1983-4 teaching English as a foreign language in Gujranwala, Pakistan. Then he read Classics and Philosophy at Magdalen College, Oxford (1984-88), and wrote his doctorate (a comparison of Aristotle’s and Augustine’s views on free will) in the Divinity Faculty of Edinburgh University (1989-1992). Between 1992 and 1995 he was a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, and a lecturer at Merton College, in Oxford. He has also taught for the Workers’ Educational Association, and at UEA, Manchester, and Dundee. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and a Visiting Fellow twice in St Andrews (in the School of Latin and Greek, and in the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs) and once in Edinburgh (at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities). He is Treasurer of the Mind Association and Reviews Editor of The Philosophical Quarterly. He is Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Philosophical, Anthropological, and Film Studies at St Andrews. He held AHRC research fellowships in 2001-2 and in 2005-6.

Here are some of his research interests, with links to late-draft versions of work he has published in the area:

Normative ethics:

Go here for “Option Ranges” [Word document 94 KB] (Journal of Applied Philosophy 2001)

And here for “Persons in Time” [Word document 101 KB] (in Heather Dyke, ed., Time and Ethics (Kluwer 2003)

Metaethics:

Go here for TDJC’s Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews discussion of Jonathan Dancy, Ethics Without Principles

Go here for his “Moral Perception” (Philosophy 2008)

The history of philosophy, especially Plato, but also Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas:

Go here for “Socrates and Antigone: two ways not to be martyred” (Prudentia Special Issue May 2001)

And here for “Reading the Peritrope” [Word document 188 KB] (Phronesis 2006)

And here for “The Good Man is the Measure of All Things” [Word document 121 KB] (in Moral Objectivity in the Ancient World, ed. Christopher Gill (Oxford UP, March 2005)

He is increasingly interested in political philosophy in the ancient world “Why wasn’t Socrates a cosmopolitan?” [PDF 80 KB] (draft; final version forthcoming in Ratio 2009).

He is also increasingly sceptical about the role of systematic moral theory in doing ethics: “Ethics beyond moral theory” [PDF 205 KB] (draft; final version forthcoming in Ratio 2009). (draft; final version forthcoming in Philosophical Investigations 2009).

Applied ethics:

Go here for “Two distinctions that do make a difference” [Word document 106 KB] (Philosophy 2002)

Epistemology:

Go here for Prelude [Word document 55 KB] and Chapter One [Word document 132 KB] of The Inescapable Self (Orion Books 2005). Follow this link for a review.

He would be delighted to hear from anyone who would be interested in doctoral study in any of these areas.

He has published ten books:

• Aristotle and Augustine on Freedom (Macmillan 1995),
• The Plato Reader (Edinburgh UP 1996),
• Philosophy of the Environment: Collected Essays (editor, Edinburgh UP 1997),
• Understanding Human Goods (Edinburgh UP 1998),
• Human Values (coedited with David Oderberg, Macmillan 2004),
• Reading Plato’s Theaetetus (Hackett/ Academia Verlag, 2004); read review.
• The Inescapable Self: Western Philosophy since Descartes (Orion, 2005),
• Values and Virtues: collected essays (editor, Oxford UP, 2006); read review.
• Ethics and Experience: Life Beyond Moral Theory (Acumen 2009); read review.
• The Moral Problem of Demandingness: collected essays (Palgrave 2009)

Personal Interests

Timothy Chappell is now fully active again after his return from sick leave following a serious climbing accident on Ben Nevis in April. Some of his reflections on this incident [PDF, 66 KB] can be found here, in a piece which is also forthcoming in New Blackfriars.

He is unable to think of a genre of music that he doesn't like (apart from bad). He writes poetry [PDF version], some of it published, and skis badly enough to be entertaining to other skiers. He is married with four daughters, and is an active member of All Souls' Episcopalian Church, Dundee. He is a paid-up member of Affirmation Scotland.

Contacting Professor Chappell

Timothy Chappell can be contacted electronically by anyone who can type his first initial, a dot, his surname, the usual ‘at’ sign, and the ‘open.ac.uk’ suffix, in that order.

Timothy Chappell blogs on the OU Ethics Centre blog:
http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/OpenMindedEthics/