Susan James (philosopher)

Susan James FBA (born 1951) is a British professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College London. She has previously taught at the University of Connecticut and the University of Cambridge. She is well known for her work on the history of seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophy.

Education and career

Susan James received her BA, MA and PhD degrees in Philosophy from New Hall, University of Cambridge. She was Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut for two years before she returned to Cambridge, first as the Kathryn Jex Blake Research Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge and then Lecturer in the Faculty of Philosophy. She joined Birkbeck in 2000 as Anniversary Reader in Philosophy, and became Professor of Philosophy in 2002. She was Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Cambridge in 1997-9 and at Birkbeck in 2003-6. She is married and has two children.

She has held a number of Visiting Fellowships: at the Research School of Social Science, Australian National University (1994 and 2006); at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1998); at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2003-4); and at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University (2013–14). She has also held a number of visiting Professorships: she was the John Findlay Visiting Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Boston University in 2008; the Kohut Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago in 2017; and since 2015 has held a Visiting Professorship associated with the Humanities Center at the Johns Hopkins University.

She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2019. She was also resident of the Aristotelian Society in 2015–16

Philosophical work

James has published widely on the history of seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophy, political and social philosophy and feminist philosophy. Most recently she has focused on the ethical and political implications of the passions in early modern philosophy, primarily in the work of Spinoza.

Her first book was The Content of Social Explanation (Cambridge University Press, 1984). She has also written more than 50 journal articles.

Bibliography

Books

• The Content of Social Explanation (Cambridge University Press, 1984; digitally printed paperback 2009)ISBN 9780521266673
• Beyond Equality and Difference, co-edited with Gisela Bock (Routledge, 1992)ISBN 9780415079891
• Passion and Action: The Emotions in Early Modern Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1997 – available at Oxford Scholarship Online) ISBN 9780198250135
• Visible Women: Essays in Legal Theory and Political Philosophy, co-edited with Stephanie Palmer (Hart, 2002)ISBN 978-1841131955
• The Political Writings of Margaret Cavendish (Cambridge University Press, 2003)ISBN 978-0521633505
• Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion and Politics: The Theologico-Political Treatise (Oxford University Press, 2012) ISBN 978-0199698127

Selected journal articles

• James, Susan (1999). The philosophical innovations of Margaret Cavendish. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 7 (2):219 – 244.
• James, Susan (2003). Rights as enforceable claims. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103 (2):133–147.
• James, Susan (2006). The Politics of Emotion: Liberalism and Cognitivism. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 81 (58):231-.
• James, Susan (2011). Creating Rational Understanding: Spinoza as a Social Epistemologist. Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 85 (1):181–199.

External links

• Profile at Birkbeck College website
• Profile on Philpapers
• Encountering the Author: Susan James, Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion and Politics
• BBC Radio4 'In Our Time's Greatest Philosopher Vote' Susan James on Spinoza