Professor Philip Pettit

Biography

Philip Pettit is the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Human Values at Princeton University and also Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University. Born and raised in Ireland, he holds a B.A. and M.A. from the National University and a Ph.D. from Queen’s University, Belfast. He was a lecturer in University College, Dublin, a Research Fellow at Trinity Hall, and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bradford. He moved full-time to the A   ustralian National University in 1983, full-time to Princeton in 2002 and has held positions jointly at both universities since 2013. He works in a range of areas, including ethical and political theory; the theory of collective and corporate agency; and the philosophy of mind and has published various books in those areas, including most recently The State (2023). He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (1987) and the Humanities Academy (1988) in Australia and The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2009), an Honorary Member, Royal Irish Academy (2010), a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy (2013), and Correspondant en Philosophie de l’Academie des Sciences Morales et Politique (Institut de France) (2019). He holds the following honorary degrees: D.Litt. Politics, National University of Ireland, June 2000; Ph.D. Political Science, University of Crete, 2005; Ph.D. Philosophy, Université de Montreal, 2006; D.Litt.Philosophy, Queen’s University, Belfast, 2007; D.Ph. Philosophy, Lund University, 2008; Ph.D. University of Athens, Sept 2014; Ph.D. Law, University of Buenos Aires, 2019. He was made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2017.