Frederick D'Agostino

Biography

Fred D’Agostino is Emeritus Professor of Humanities at The University of Queensland (UQ), where he was Executive Dean of Arts and President of the Academic Board. He was Editor of the Australian Journal of Philosophy and of the journal Politics, Philosophy and Economics. He is author of four books – Chomsky’s System of Ideas (Clarendon, 1986), Free Public Reason (OUP, 1996), Incommensurability and Commensuration (Ashgate, 2003), and Naturalizing Epistemology (Palgrave, 2010) and co-editor of three collections – Freedom and Rationality: Essays in Honor of John Watkins (Kluwer, 1988) Public Reason (Ashgate, 2000) and The Routledge Companion to Social and Political Philosophy (Routledge, second edition forthcoming). He did undergraduate psychology at Amherst College (BA magna cum laude, 1968), anthropology at Princeton University (MA, 1973), and philosophy at the London School of Economics and Political Science (PhD, 1978). He was Research Fellow in Philosophy in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University (1978-84) and later worked at the University of New England (1984-2004), where he was Head of the School of Social Science, Sub-Dean of Social Science, Associate Dean of Arts and Member of the University Council. He won the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence for his work teaching philosophy of social science. His current interests are in complexity in relation to political philosophy and the academic disciplines and their culture and organisation.