Susanne Bobzien

Susanne Bobzien FBA (born 1960) is a German-born philosopher[1] whose research interests focus on philosophy of logic and language, determinism and freedom, and ancient philosophy.[2] She currently is senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford and professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford.[3]

Education

Bobzien was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1960.[1] She graduated in 1985 with an M.A. (Magister Artium) at Bonn University, and in 1993 with a doctorate in philosophy (D.Phil.) at Oxford University, where from 1987-1989 she was affiliated with Somerville College.[3]

Academic career

Bobzien currently holds the position of senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford and is professor of philosophy at Oxford University.[3] She was appointed to a senior professorship in philosophy at Yale in 2001[4] and held this position from 2002 to 2010.[3] From 1993 to 2002 she had a tenured position at Oxford University.[3] From 1990 to 2002, she was fellow and praelector in philosophy at The Queen's College, where she was the first woman to be appointed a tutorial fellow.[5] Before that she was tutorial fellow in philosophy at Balliol College.[3] Among her awards are a British Academy Research Readership (2000–2002),[6] and a fellowship of the National Endowment for the Humanities (2008–09).[7] In 2014 she was elected a fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.[8] Bobzien has published several books and numerous articles in leading academic journals and collections.[1]

Main contributions to philosophy

Determinism and freedom

Ancient philosophy: Bobzien's major work Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy [4] is the first-full scale modern study of the Stoic theory of determinism;[9] It explores in depth the views of the Stoics on causality, fate, the modalities, divination, rational agency, the non-futility of action, moral responsibility and the formation of character.[10] In this book and in her articles "The Inadvertent Conception and Late Birth of the Free-Will Problem" and "Did Epicurus discover the Free-Will Problem?" Bobzien argues that the problem of determinism and free-will, as conceived in contemporary philosophy, was not considered by Aristotle, Epicurus or the Stoics, as was previously thought, but only in the 2nd century CE and as the result of a conflation of Stoic and Aristotelian theory.[9][11]

Kant: Bobzien's "Die Kategorien der Freiheit bei Kant" (The Categories of Freedom in Kant) has been described as an article "that has long been the starting point for any German reader seeking to deepen his understanding of the second chapter of [the Analytic of Kant's Critique of Practical Reason]." It differentiates the main functions of Kant's Categories of Freedom: as conditions of the possibility for actions (i) to be free, (ii) to be comprehensible as free and (iii) to be morally evaluated.[12]

Ancient logic

Stoic Logic: Bobzien's book Die stoische Modallogik[13] is the first monograph on Stoic modal logic.[14] It presents a detailed picture of the Stoic theory of modality.[15] In her paper "Stoic Syllogistic" Bobzien sets out the evidence for Stoic syllogistic. She argues that Stoic syllogistic should not be assimilated to standard propositional calculus, but rather treated as a distinct system which bears important similarities to relevance logic.[16]

Deduction: Bobzien's paper "The Development of Modus Ponens in Antiquity" traces the earliest development of the most basic principle of deduction, i.e. modus ponens (or Law of Detachment).[17][18]

Vagueness

Bobzien has proposed a logic of higher-order vagueness that avoids both the higher-order vagueness paradoxes and sharp boundaries of the borderline zone (columnar higher-order vagueness),[19] has provided arguments for the existence of higher-order vagueness[20] and has introduced the notion of borderline nestings.[21]

Major publications

Determinism and freedom
  • Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy (Oxford 1998). ISBN 0199247676
  • "The Inadvertent Conception and Late Birth of the Free-Will Problem" (Phronesis 43, 1998).
  • "Did Epicurus Discover the Free-Will Problem?" (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 19, 2000).
  • "Die Kategorien der Freiheit bei Kant" (in Kant: Analysen-Probleme-Kritik vol. 1, Würzburg 1988).

Ancient logic
  • Die stoische Modallogik (Würzburg 1986). ISBN 3884792849
  • "Stoic Syllogistic" (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 14, 1996). ISBN 0198236700
  • "The Development of Modus Ponens in Antiquity" (Phronesis 47, 2002).

Vagueness

See also

References
  1. Who'sWho in America 2012, 64th Edition
  2. Bobzien's British Academy Page
  3. All Souls Faculty Page
  4. Yale Daily News 3/23/2001, "Philosophy hires rising Oxford star" Archived 3 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  5. The Queen's College Oxford Who's Who Archived 15 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  6. British Academy Research Readerships 2000–2002
  7. NEH Fellowships at Independent Research Institutions, announced June 2008
  8. "British Academy announces 42 new fellows". Times Higher Education. 18 July 2014. Retrieved 18 July 2014.
  9. Times Literary Supplement (15 September 2000) "Chrysippus and the seamless web"
  10. Mind 109 (2000) p.855
  11. PhilPapers archive link to Bobzien's professional papers
  12. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2010.11.06, of K. Ameriks, O. Höffe (eds.) Kant's Moral and Legal Philosophy, Cambridge 2009.
  13. Die stoische Modallogik (Würzburg 1986)
  14. K. Hülser, Die Fragmente zur Dialektik der Stoiker, vol. 3. p. VI.
  15. S. Knuuttila, Modalities in Medieval Philosophy, p.16.
  16. Review of Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy XIV, 1996.
  17. PhilPapers
  18. The Development of Modus Ponens in Antiquity", Phronesis 47, 2002
  19. Philosophers' Imprint 2010
  20. "In Defense of True Higher-Order Vagueness", Synthese 180, 2011
  21. "Higher-Order Vagueness and Borderline Nestings – a Persistent Confusion", Analytic Philosophy 54.1, 2013
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