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Alice Crary

American philosopher

Alice Crary
Crary in 2017
Born	1967 (age 56–57)[2] Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Education	Harvard University (BA) University of Pittsburgh (PhD)
Notable work	The Good it Promises, the Harm it Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism (2023) Animal Crisis (2022) Inside Ethics (2016) Beyond Moral Judgment (2007) The New Wittgenstein (2000)
Awards	Visiting Fellow, All Souls College, The University of Oxford (2021-22) Membership, Institute for Advanced Study School of Social Sciences (2017-18)
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Pittsburgh school Ordinary language philosophy[1]
Doctoral advisor	John McDowell
Other academic advisors	Stanley Cavell, Hilary Putnam
Main interests	Moral philosophy, philosophy and literature, epistemology, feminist philosophy, feminist epistemology, conceptualism, animal ethics, disability studies, The Frankfurt School, objectivity
Notable ideas	Wider objectivity and rationality; critical animal theory; All human beings and animals are inside ethics
Website	www.alicecrary.com

Alice Crary (/ˈkrɛəri/; born 1967) is an American philosopher who currently holds the positions of University Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Faculty, The New School for Social Research in New York City and Visiting Fellow at Regent's Park College, University of Oxford, U.K. (where she was Professor of Philosophy 2018–19).

Philosophical work[edit]

Crary works in the fields of moral philosophy, feminism, animal ethics, and Wittgenstein scholarship. She has written about cognitive disability,^[3] critical theory,^[4] propaganda,^[5] nonhuman animal cognition,^[6] effective altruism,^[7] and the philosophy of literature and narrative.^[8] Her work is especially influenced by Cora Diamond,^[9] John McDowell, Stanley Cavell,^[10] Hilary Putnam, bell hooks,^[11] Kimberlé Crenshaw,^[11] Charles W. Mills, and Peter Winch.

Ethics and moral philosophy[edit]

Crary's first monograph, Beyond Moral Judgment,^[12] discusses how literature and feminism help to reframe moral presuppositions. Her Inside Ethics^[13] argues that ethics in disability studies and animal studies is stunted by a lack of moral imagination, caused by a narrow understanding of rationality and by a philosophy severed from literature and art.^[14][15][16]

Feminism[edit]

Crary's work on feminism is critical of standard views of objectivityinanalytic philosophy and post-structuralism. In her view, both traditions mistakenly conceive of objectivity as value-neutral, and thus incompatible with ethical and political perspectives.^[11] According to Crary, these "ethically-loaded perspectives" invite both cognitive and ethical appreciation for the lives of women, in ways that count as objective knowledge.^[17] Like her moral philosophy, her feminist conception of objectivity is informed by Wittgenstein, who she understands as proposing a "wide" view of objectivity: one in which affective responses are not merely non-cognitive persuasive manipulations but reveal real forms of suffering that give us a more objective understanding of the world.^[18]

Wittgenstein[edit]

Crary is associated with the so-called "therapeutic"^[19] or "resolute"^[20] reading of Wittgenstein. In her co-edited collection of essays of such readings, The New Wittgenstein, her own contribution argues against the standard use-theory readings of Wittgenstein that often render his thought as politically conservative and implausible.^[21] Since then, she has contributed to numerous collections of Wittgenstein scholarship, including Emotions and Understanding^[22] and interpretations of Wittgenstein's On Certainty.^[23]

Animals in Ethics and Politics[edit]

Crary has promoted (e.g., in her 2024 Cambridge Union opposition^[24]) the view that humans and animals have moral worth above and beyond any quantitative valuation.^[25] This view is further expounded in the 2022 monograph Animal Crisis: A New Critical Theory co-written with Lori Gruen.

Public philosophy[edit]

Crary frequently participates in and organizes events for public discussion,^[26][27][28] such as public debates on the valuation of life^[29] and the treatment of animals and the cognitively disabled.^[30][31][32] She has also written for the New York Times.^[33][34]

Crary has contributed to international educational activities focusing on the intersection of philosophy with critical theory and political philosophy. These include summer philosophy workshops at Humboldt UniversityinBerlin, Germany, the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies/New School for Social Research Europe Democracy and Diversity Institute in Wroclaw, Poland,^[35] and the Kritische Theorie in Berlin Critical Theory Summer School (Progress, Regression, and Social Change) in Berlin, Germany,^[36] which she co-organized with Rahel Jaeggi.

Personal life[edit]

Crary was a 1983-4 exchange student with Youth for Understanding in the southern German town of Achern. She was also a national champion rower at the Lakeside School (Seattle)inSeattle, Washington and placed 6th in the Junior Women's Eight at the 1985 World Rowing Junior Championships in Brandenburg, Germany.^[37] In the 1980s, after studying liberation theology with Harvey CoxatHarvard Divinity School, Crary researched Christian base communities in southern Mexico and Guatemala. In the early 1990s, she was a teacher at the Collegio Americano in Quito, Ecuador.

Bibliography[edit]

Books – monographs

• Animal Crisis (Polity, 2022 (co-written with Lori Gruen), translated into Spanish (Ediciones Catedra, 2023) and forthcoming in 2024 in French (Vrin). Discussed at/on Yale Law School, Living Philosophy, New Books Network, The Philosopher, Wild Connection, Knowing Animals Podcast, Factually Podcast, Storytelling Animals Podcast, The Animal Turn Podcast, Species United Podcast, The Annual Weissbourd Conference, University of Chicago (May 2023).
• Inside Ethics: On the Demands of Moral Thought (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2016). (Reviewed in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews and Hypatia as well as Environmental Philosophy, the Nordic Wittgenstein Review, La Vie des Ideés, Choice, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, and The Journal of Animal Ethics). The book's philosophical content and linkage with liberal arts education are discussed in recent interviews at the APA blog and Social Research Matters as well as Il Sole 24 Ore (in Italian). Inside Ethics is also the subject of a 2018 SymposiumatThe Syndicate Network featuring commentary by Stanley Hauerwas, Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen, Aaron Klink, and Avner Baz, with extensive author responses (convened and edited by Sean Larson, Timothy J. Furry, and Ethan D. Smith).
• Beyond Moral Judgment (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2007). (Reviewed in Analytic Philosophy, Choice, The European Journal of Philosophy, Ethics (twice), Hypatia, Metapsychology Online Reviews, Mind, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Philo, and The Pluralist and discussed at a 2008 "Author Meets Critics" session at the Eastern Division Meeting of the APA.)

Books – edited volumes

• The Good it Promises, the Harm it Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2023 (co-edited with Carol J. Adams and Lori Gruen)). Foreword by Amia Srinivasan, with contributions by animal activists and academics criticizing the impact of effective altruism on the pro-animal movement and overlapping social justice movements. Reviewed in Sciences Humaines, EcoLit Books, L’Amorce: Revue contre le spécisme, oxford public philosophy, and Mind)
• Here and There: Sites of PhilosophybyStanley Cavell (Harvard University Press, 2022, co-editor with Nancy Bauer and Sandra Laugier, forthcoming in Spanish translation (Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza (PUZ)). Reviewed in The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The LA Review of Books, and The London Review of Books.
• Wittgenstein and the Moral Life: Essays in Honor of Cora Diamond (Cambridge, MIT Press, 2007).
• Reading Cavell (New York, Routledge, 2006 (co-edited with Sanford Shieh)).
• The New Wittgenstein (New York, Routledge, 2000 (co-edited with Rupert Read)).

See also[edit]

• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers
• List of female philosophers

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• New School for Social Research Homepage
• Institute for Advanced Study Homepage