John Cottingham is an English philosopher, educated at Merchant Taylors’ School near London, and St John’s College, Oxford. He is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Reading, Professorial Research Fellow, Heythrop College, University of London, Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford and editor of Ratio: the International Journal of Analytic Philosophy. The focus of his research has been early-modern philosophy (Rene Descartes was the subject of his DPhil at Oxford), the philosophy of religion and moral philosophy.[1][2] Cottingham has served as a president of the Aristotelian Society, the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion, the Mind Association and as Chairman of the British Society for the History of Philosophy. A Festschrift with responses by Cottingam, The Moral Life, was published by Palgrave in 2008.[2]
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In his work on Descartes, Cottingham introduced trialism as an alternative interpretation of the mind-body dualism of Descartes. Although composed of two substances, mind and body, the human being possesses distinctive attributes in its own right (including sensations, passions, emotions), and these form a third category, that cannot be reduced to thought or extension.[3] Cottingham has also argued that Descartes’s view of animals as ‘machines’ does not have the reductionistic implications commonly supposed.[4] Finally, Cottingham has explored the importance of Descartes as a moral philosopher, with a comprehensive picture of the good life that draws both on his scientific work (in physiology and psychology) and also on the theistic outlook that informs all his philosophy.[5] Cottingham is co-editor and translator of the three-volume Cambridge edition of The Philosophical Writings of Descartes.[6]
In Philosophy and the Good Life and other works Cottingham criticizes the psychological impoverishment of contemporary moral philosophy, and argues that any plausible theory of a good and integrated life for human beings needs to draw on the insights available from a broadly psychoanalytic perspective.[7] His work on partiality defends the importance of self-concern as a central ingredient in virtue. [8] In On the Meaning of Life, he addresses the relationship between moral, aesthetic and religious modes of awareness in constituting a meaningful life.[9] Cottingham’s more recent work in the philosophy of religion argues for the primacy of the moral and spiritual aspects of religious allegiance over theoretical and doctrinal components.[10]