David Decosimo on Clubhouse

Bio

Boston University philosopher, humanist, scholar of religion, ethics, and politics. Lover of freedom, reason-giving, and the search for truth across our deepest differences. Friendship above politics. Argument not power plays. Democracy and virtue. Anti-authoritarian. Anti-conformist. Aristotle, Aquinas, and King.

I’m a professor at BU, affiliated with the School of Theology, the Graduate Program in Religion, and the Department of Philosophy. I received my PhD in the study of religion from Princeton University, working with Jeff Stout, Cornel West, & John Cooper, among others.

My first book, Ethics as a Work of Charity: Thomas Aquinas and Pagan Virtue, was published by Stanford University Press in 2014. It won the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Prize from the University of Heidelberg and has been reviewed in over twenty journals across religious studies, philosophy, and theology. My second book, on the tradition of ethical reasoning and ethical life in Christianity, will be published by Yale University Press. My scholarly articles have appeared in numerous journals in several different fields and range across topics such as the ethics of lying, torture, Islamic political philosophy, religious freedom and non-domination, the nature of goodness, and the inadequacy of genealogy.

I have served as the Chair of BU’s Academic Freedom Committee, a standing faculty committee, for several years and in that capacity have advocated for open inquiry and academic freedom as faculty have increasingly confronted forces of illiberalism and attempts to establish and impose ideological orthodoxies.