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 23711 Black Radical Political Thought
This course will introduce a tradition of black political thought concerning the relation between capitalism and racial oppression. We will read and discuss the writings of, among others, W. E. B. DuBois, C. L. R. James, Fanklin Fazier, Oliver Cromwell Cox, Frantz Fanon, Claudia Jones, Angela Davis and the Combahee River Collective. (A) Syllabus
PHIL 20215/30215 The End of Life
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.
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)
For full list of Anton Ford's courses back to the 2012-13 academic year, see our searchable course database.