Professor Jonathan Webber
Deputy Head and Head of Subject
- webberj1@cardiff.ac.uk
- +44 29 2087 5660
- 1.54, John Percival Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff, CF10 3EU
- Available for postgraduate supervision
Overview
I am currently Deputy Head of School and Head of Philosophy, having arrived here as Lecturer in 2008.
I research and teach at the intersection of moral philosophy and the philosophy of psychology. I am especially interested in what contemporary social psychology can offer to current debates in moral philosophy, and in how philosophy and psychology can be informed by twentieth-century French existentialism.
I am President of the UK Sartre Society and a Trustee of The Mind Association. I was President of the British Society for Ethical Theory 2014-19.
My most recent book is Rethinking Existentialism, published by Oxford University Press in 2018. One review has described it as "the only book one needs".
The best way to find out more about my work is to read or listen to my freely available Aeon magazine essay Against Type, which is about French existentialism, social psychology, and contemporary ethics.
Biography
Professor of Philosophy, Cardiff University, since 2017
Reader in Philosophy, Cardiff University, 2012-17
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Cardiff University, 2010-12
Lecturer in Philosophy, Cardiff University, 2008-10
Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Bristol, 2006-8
Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Sheffield, 2001-6
PhD in Philosophy, University of London, 2001
MPhil in Philosophy, University of London, 1997
BA(Hons) in Philosophy and Theology, University of Oxford, 1994
Publications
We are currently unable to retrieve the list of publications. Visit our institutional repository.Supervision
I am interested in supervising doctoral research that does at least one of these things:
- considers implications of cognitive psychology or social psychology for moral philosophy
- analyses concepts and claims central to contemporary social psychology
- argues for the relevance of works of twentieth-century existentialism to moral philosophy
- analyses works of twentieth-century phenomenology and existentialism
Current Projects
Post-Ironic Existentialism
– Thom Hamer
Reciprocity and Universal Moral Grammar
– Harriet Ivison
The Problem of Disgust for Naturalistic Virtue Ethics
– James Paskin
Past projects
Ontological Critique: A Philosophical Tool for Advancing Social Psychology
– Matthew Lloyd Jenkins, 2021
Interpersonal Atmospheres: An Empathetic Account
– Lucy Osler, 2020
(co-supervised with Professor Giovanna Colombetti, University of Exeter)
Kant and the Unity of Reason
– John Saunders, 2019
The Communicative Theory of Punishment and The Problem of Dangerous Offenders
– Daisy Seabourne, 2019
A Humean Metaphysics of Character
– Ethan Chambers, 2018