Below is the audio recording of Margaret Gilbert’s John Dewey Lecture, “Philosophy as Personal Quest and Collective Enterprise,” given at the 2022 Pacific Division Meeting. The full text is available on the APA website (member sign-in is required) as well as on JSTOR.
The audio of the lecture is available here:
“Philosophy as Personal Quest and Collective Enterprise” by Margaret Gilbert
Margaret Gilbert is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of California, Irvine, where she was the Founding Abraham I. Melden Chair in Moral Philosophy from 2006 to 2025. Prior to joining the faculty at UCI, she taught at the University of Manchester (UK) and the University of Connecticut, where she is professor emerita. She has a BA in classics and philosophy from Cambridge University, as well as a BPhil with distinction and a PhD in philosophy from Oxford University. Her research interests are in social phenomena such as acting together, collective beliefs, social conventions, agreements and promises, and related areas of moral and political philosophy and philosophy of law, including rights theory and game theory. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016 and awarded the Dr. Martin R. Lebowitz and Eve Lewellis Lebowitz Prize by the APA and the Phi Beta Kappa society in 2019. She served as president of the APA Pacific Division from 2023 to 2024.
About this series: The Blog of the APA is pleased to publish the presidential addresses and John Dewey Lectures given at the Eastern, Central, and Pacific APA Division Meetings, which communicate the ideas and experiences that the renowned philosophers who delivered them felt are most important for people in the field to know. The blog wishes to thank the APA leadership and Jeremy Cushing for their support and assistance in making these recordings available.
