Interests: Early Modern Philosophy, Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, History of Ethics

Aaron Garrett has a BA from the University of Chicago, and MA and PhD degrees from the New School for Social Research. He is currently working on a book on history and character in seventeenth and eighteenth century moral philosophy. His areas of interest include Spinoza, Bayle, the Scottish Enlightenment, philosophy and race, late Medieval and Renaissance philosophy, and the philosophy of history. His teaching reflects these areas.

He has taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in New York and Germany, before joining the Boston University faculty.

Recent Publications:

Books:

Routledge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, editor (London and New York: Routledge, Forthcoming)

Meaning in Spinoza’s Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)

John Millar, The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks, ed. with introduction and notes (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006)

Francis Hutcheson: An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Illustrations on the Moral Sense, critical, collated edition, with introduction and notes (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003)

Monboddo’s Antient Metaphysics, edited with introduction (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2001), 6 v.

Buffon’s Natural History: General and Particular, Translated by William Smellie, edited with introduction (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2000), 6 v.

Animal Rights and Animal Souls in the Eighteenth Century, edited with introduction (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2000), 6 v.

Book chapters and articles:

“Francis Hutcheson and the Origin of Animal Rights,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:2 (April 2007)

“Comment: Jerrold Seigel’s The Idea of the Self,” Modern Intellectual History 3:2 (2006) pp. 299-304.

“Animals” in Grayling, Pyle, and Goulder, eds., Encyclopedia of British Philosophy (Bristol: Continuum, 2006)

“Adam Ferguson” in Donald Borchert, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 2006)

“Human Nature,” in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)

“The Method of the Analyst,” in The Philosophy of Jaakko Hintikka (Chicago: Open Court, 2006)

“The Lives of the Philosophers,” Jahrbuch für Recht und Ethik Band 12 (November 2004)

“Adam Smith on Moral Luck,” Christel Fricke, ed., Adam Smith als Moralphilosoph (Berlin: deGruyter, 2005)

“In Defense of Elephants: Priestley on Reid,” The Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 2 (2) 2004, pp. 137–153.

“Hume on Race and National Character,” in Eighteenth-Century Thought 2 (2004), pp. 127-152.

“Scepticism in the 17th Century,” in Martin Fitzpatrick, Peter Jones, and Iain McCalman, ed., The Enlightenment World (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 57-64.

“Was Spinoza a Natural Lawyer?” Cardozo Law Review 25:2 (December 2003), pp. 627-41.

“Anthropology: The Original of Human Nature,” in Alexander Broadie (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge: CUP, 2003), pp. 79-93.

“Of Racism and Remembrance,” Common-Place, I:4 (July 2001) http://www.common-place.org/vol-01/no-04/garrett/