Paul Russell (philosopher)

Paul Russell (born Glasgow, Scotland, 1955) is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. From 2018-2025 he was also Professor of Philosophy at Lund University, where he was also Director of the Lund/Gothenburg Responsibility Project [LGRP]. Prior to that he was Professor of Philosophy at University of Gothenburg from 2015-2017.

Education and research

Paul Russell holds an undergraduate degree from Edinburgh University (1979) and a PhD from Cambridge University (1986). At Cambridge his thesis work was supervised by Professor Sir Bernard Williams. He held a research fellowship at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge from 1984 to 1987.

Apart from the positions mentioned above he has also held a number of visiting appointments at various universities, including University of Virginia (1988); Stanford University (1989–1990), where he held a Mellon Fellowship; University of Pittsburgh (1996–1997); and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2005), where he was Kenan Distinguished Visitor. In 2010 he was the Fowler Hamilton Visiting Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford and in 2023 he was Beaufort Visiting Fellow at St. John's College, Cambridge.

His principal research interests include problems of free will and moral responsibility and the history of early modern philosophy (particularly David Hume).

He is the author of Freedom and Moral Sentiment: Hume's Way of Naturalizing Responsibility (1995), The Riddle of Hume's Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism, and Irreligion (2008), The Limits of Free Will: Selected Essays (2017), and Recasting Hume and Early Modern Philosophy: Selected Essays, all published by Oxford University Press. His book The Riddle of Hume's Treatise won the book prize from the Journal of the History of Philosophy in 2008, a prize bestowed on "the best published book in the history of philosophy." He has served on the editorial board of the journals Hume Studies and Journal of the History of Philosophy.

Along with his academic publications he has also published opinion pieces and reviews in a variety of venues including, The Globe and Mail, the Vancouver Sun, the Times Literary Supplement, The Scotsman, and Aeon. Selections of his work have been translated into several languages, including Chinese, Polish, Italian and Hungarian.

In recent years Paul Russell has commented on and discussed issues relating to free speech on the university campus, including at the University of British Columbia.

Awards

• 2023 Beaufort Visiting Fellow, St. John's College, Cambridge
• 2014 Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), Grants for International Recruitment of Leading Researchers. [Awarded to the University of Gothenburg and Lund University, recruited as researcher. ]
• 2014 Killam Faculty Research Prize (UBC)
• 2010 Fowler Hamilton Visiting Fellow in the Humanities at Christ Church, Oxford
• 2010 Awarded the Journal of the History of Philosophy prize for the best published book in the history of philosophy in 2008 [The Riddle of Hume’s Treatise].
• 2007 Killam Teaching Prize (UBC)
• 1989 - 1990 Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, Stanford University
• 1984 - 1986 Research Fellowship, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge

Works

Books

• Recasting Hume & Early Modern Philosophy: Selected Essays. New York (Oxford University Press: 2021).
• The Limits of Free Will: Selected Essays (Oxford University Press: 2017).
• The Riddle of Hume’s Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism, and Irreligion (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2008). [Published in paperback 2010 with a new foreword.]
• Freedom and Moral Sentiment: Hume's Way of Naturalizing Responsibility (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). Published in paperback, 2002.

Books Introduced and Edited

• The Oxford Handbook of Hume. (Oxford University Press: 2016).
• The Philosophy of Free Will: Essential Readings from the Contemporary Debates, edited with Oisin Deery (Oxford University Press: 2013).
• Free Will and Reactive Attitudes: Perspectives on P.F. Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment”, Introduced and edited with Michael McKenna (Farnham: Ashgate: 2008).[ Reissued and published in paperback by Routledge, 2016.]
• Joseph J. Russell, Analysis and Dialectic: Studies in the Logic of Foundation Problems, Introduced and edited by P. Russell (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1984).

Wrote Introductions For

• David Hume, Dialoger om naturlig religion [Nya Doxa, 2020] Swedish translation by Jan Landgren. The edition is provided with a newly written preface by Paul Russell.

Further reading

• Garrett, Don (January 2010). "A Review of Paul Russell, The Riddle of Hume's Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism and Irreligion". Philosophical Review. 119 (1): 108–12. doi:10.1215/00318108-2009-030.
• Vitz, Rico (27 July 2008). "Paul Russell - The Riddle of Hume's Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism, and Irreligion". Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. University of Notre Dame. Retrieved 22 November 2010.
• Russell, Paul (11 June 1999). "'The supremacy of God' does not belong in the Constitution". The Globe and Mail – via philarchive.org.
• Russell, Paul Why Religious Identities are not Immune to Criticism: AEON, August 2017
• Russell, Paul Paul Russell on Bernard Williams: TLS, 18 December 2018
• Russell, Paul Vice Dressed as Virtue AEON, May 2020
• Russell, Paul (23 September 2020). "David Hume: Saint or Sinner?". The Scotsman.

External links

• Paul Russell, Lund University / University of British Columbia
• UBC prof wins $12 million from Sweden to explore global moral problems
• Hume’s Irreligious Core, Interview with 3:16 Magazine Interview by Richard Marshall.
• Philosophy Bites: Paul Russell on David Hume's Philosophy of Irreligion
• Philosophy Bites: Paul Russell on Fate