John Hawthorne

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Western Philosophy 20th-century philosophy

Name	Hawthorne, John
Birth
School/tradition	analytic philosophy
Main interests	metaphysics, philosophy of language, epistemology
Influenced by	William Alston, Jonathan Bennett, Stewart Cohen, David Lewis, Peter van Inwagen, Timothy Williamson

John Hawthorne is the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford University, though he continues to teach on a visiting basis at Rutgers University at New Brunswick. He is primarily known for his work in metaphysics and epistemology; his 2006 collection Metaphysical Essays offers original treatments of fundamental topics in philosophy, including identity, ontology, vagueness, and causation.

In his book Knowledge and Lotteries, Hawthorne defends a view in epistemology according to which the presence of knowledge is dependent on the subject's interests. (He terms the view 'Subject-Sensitive Invariantism'). Unlike contextualism, Hawthorne's view does not require that the meaning of the word "know" changes from one context of ascription to another. His view is thus a variety of invariantism. However, whether a subject has knowledge depends to a surprising extent on features of the subject's context, including practical concerns. This position can be classed as a form of pragmatism (Hawthorne, 2004: p. 180). See Jason Stanley for a similar view.

Hawthorne has also written on philosophy of language and philosophical logic, philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, and on Leibniz.

Hawthorne earned his Ph.D. from Syracuse University, where he studied with William Alston and Jonathan F. Bennett. He taught previously at New South Wales, Arizona State, Syracuse, and Rutgers.