I am an Honorary Fellow of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Reading. I was previously Head of the Department and Head of the School Humanities and retired in September 2005. The School of Humanities consists of the Departments of Classics, History, History of Art and Philosophy. I have been a member of the Reading Philosophy Department since 1972, before which I was a Lecturer in the Moral Philosophy Department at Glasgow University. I was elected a Fellow of Eton College in 2001.
During the academic year 1998-1999 I was Visiting Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Miami University, Ohio. That was my third visit to Miami University as Visiting Professor, following earlier visits in 1987 and in 1992-93.
E mail m.a.proudfoot@rdg.ac.uk
Mike Proudfoot
Department of Philosophy
University of Reading
Whiteknights, PO Box 217
Reading RG6 6AA
Phone: UK 0118 931 8325
Fax: UK 0118 931 8295
This page was last up-dated on September 11th, 2007. It was constructed by Michael Proudfoot.
I was an Associate editor of The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, General editor, G.H.R. Parkinson, 1988, to which I also contributed the Chapter “Aesthetics”. I had previously been a contributor to the Dictionary of Philosophy, edited by A.G.N. Flew, published by MacMillan and Pan in 1979.
A survey of some recent contributions to aesthetics is to be found in my “The Rediscovery of Aesthetics” in The Philosophers’ Magazine, Spring 1998. Some thoughts on figurative, abstract and representational art are contained in “Reflections on the Paul Klee Exhibition” in The Philosophers’ Magazine, Summer 2002. This is a condensed version of the first talk, given in March 2002, in the Hayward Forum series ‘Borderlines’, reflecting on specific exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery, the South Bank, London. The Hayward Forum is organised in association with the Forum for European Philosophy.
Another interest of mine is Wittgenstein, reflected in, for example, the review of Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophy and Language by A. Ambrose and M. Lazerowitz, in The Philosophical Quarterly, 1973, and in the article “The Architecture of Ludwig Wittgenstein” in The Cambridge Review, 1974.
I am currently interested in The Philosophy of Body, and I edited The Philosophy of Body, published as a special issue of RATIO in December 2002 and as a book by Blackwell in 2003. This contains the papers given at the RATIO Conference at Reading in April 2001, by Alison Adam, Hubert Dreyfus, Sean Kelly and Quassim Cassam, plus additional papers by Michael Brearley, Max de Gaynesford, and Iris Young. I am in the process of producing a new edition of A.R. Lacey's Routledge Dictionary of Philosophy, which should appear in 2008.
Some reviews:-
Wittgenstein, by A.C. Grayling, in Philosophical Books, October 1989
The Philosophy of Leisure, edited by T. Winnifrith & C. Barrett, in Philosophical Books, October 1990
Theories of Justice, by B. Barry, in Cogito, 1991
Identity, Character & Morality, edited by O. Flanagan & A.O. Rorty, in Philosophical Books, April 1992
Natural relations: Ecology, Animal Rights & Social Justice, by T. Benson, in Philosophical Books, January 1995
Valuing Emotions, by M. Stocker, in Philosophical Books, July 1998
Ethics and Sex, by I. Primoratz, in Philosophical Books, April 2002
Deeper than Reason: Emotion and Its Role in Literature, Music, and Art, by Jenefer Robinson, in Philosophy, January 2006
“Philosophy has succeeded, not without a struggle, in freeing itself from its obsession with the soul, only to find itself landed with something still more mysterious and captivating: the fact of man’s bodiliness”. Nietzsche, The Will to Power.
There has been increasing philosophical interest within Anglophone philosophy in the last few years in the body, and it seems likely that this interest will continue to increase, if not explode, over the next decade. There are several contributing causes of this interest. The first arises from the great concern in the last 50 years or so with questions of personal identity and self-identity. A second cause arises from the interest in what distinguishes human beings from computers. A third cause has been the continuing rapprochement between so-called analytic and continental philosophy. In continental philosophy, specially within the work of the phenomenologists and in Merleau-Ponty in particular, there has been a concern with embodiedness, from which analytic philosophers are gradually realising they may have something to learn. A fourth cause has been the development of feminist philosophy within the last 40 years, in which embodiedness, to begin with especially sex and gender, but later much more generally, has played a central, indeed, defining, role.
Over the past few years at Reading, I taught the following courses:-
First year courses on Mill’s Utilitarianism, on John Searle’s Mind, Brains and Science, and on Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals, and third year Option Courses on Aesthetics, and on Modern European Philosophy: the Philosophy of Body. I also teach The Philosophy of Body in the inter-disciplinary MA on Body and Representation. From 2002-03 onwards, I taught a new third year Option course on The Philosophy of Sex, which became, from 2004-05 onwards, Ethics and Sex, and which I continue to teach. I am currently supervising two PhD students, both working on aspects of the philosophy of body.
I have been involved
in a wide variety
of sports all my life. I was an international competitor at
Modern Pentathlon,
competing in the GB Team at the World Junior Championships in Bratislava in
1966. I have been the National Team Manager in two different sports. I was
manager of the GB Modern Pentathlon Team from 1973 to 1983, including the team
that won the Olympic Gold Medal in Montreal in 1976. I was Manager of both the
England and GB Water Polo Teams
from 1988 to 1991. I have also been closely involved with swimming, as a Masters
swimmer, as a coach, and as a commentator at swim meets. Until December 2005, I
also coached
the Reading Water Polo team,
promoted in 2001 to both the Premier Division of the London League (having
won the First Division title), and to Second Division of the
National League
(having won the Third Division title). The team then went on to win the London
League Premier Division in both 2002 and 2003. During my visits to the to the USA as
Visiting Professor at Miami University, I have enjoyed coaching both High School
(Talawanda) and University (Miami) Water Polo teams.
I still enjoy swimming and running, and playing water polo, both with the
Reading Club and with the Oxford University Water Club. I combine two of the
major activities in my life in an interest in the Philosophy of Sport.
I was Head of the Department of Philosophy from 1993 to 2005. From 1977 to 1997, I was Warden of Whiteknights Hall at the University of Reading, and I was involved in a wide variety of Committees concerned with student residence. I am on various University committees concerned with sport.
I am keenly interested in all the arts, but specially classical music and opera. I very much enjoy travel, and have travelled extensively in Europe, Africa and North America, and have also visited Central and South America and South East Asia. I live in Reading and Oxford.
1956-63 Whitgift School (Victoria Scholar)
1963-69 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (Open Scholar)
1969-72 Assistant Lecturer, then Lecturer, Moral Philosophy Department, Glasgow University
1969-71 Assistant Warden, Queen Margaret Hall, Glasgow University
1972-2005 Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer, Department of Philosophy, University of Reading
1977-97 Warden, Whiteknights Hall, University of Reading
1993-2005 Head of Department of Philosophy, University of Reading
2001-now Fellow of Eton College.
2002–2005 Head of the School of Humanities, University of Reading
