Thomas L. Carson

Thomas L. Carson is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of Value and the Good Life, The Status of Morality, and the newly released Lying and Deception, and is the co-editor of Morality and the Good Life and Moral Relativism.

Recently I asked him what he was reading. His reply:

During the last month I read Ronald White’s biography of Lincoln, A. Lincoln, Henry Lewis Gates’s, Lincoln on Race and Slavery, and the Library of America collection of Lincoln ’s speeches and writings. I am preparing to give a series of public lectures on Lincoln’s Ethics at my alma mater, Saint Olaf College, in 2011. These lectures will combine historical biography and moral philosophy. I am combining my work in philosophy with my lifelong interest in history. The last few chapters of Lying and Deception also address historical questions in considerable detail.

I read Philippa Foot’s Moral Dilemmas, a collection of essays by an important analytic philosopher who is a wonderfully clear stylist and writer. She takes on “big” and interesting questions, as opposed to scholarly minutiae.

I am now reading Value and Reality: The Philosophical Case for Theism, by A. C. Ewing. This book talks about the relationship between morality and religion, a topic that greatly interests me and one that I address in my earlier book Value and the Good Life.

Since I have a lot of time on my hands this summer, I have started reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace. He and Dostoevski are among my very favorite writers. It’s a great book and lives up to its reputation.

I read The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books, and The New York Times Book Review which give me good summaries of many more books than I have time to read.

See Thomas L. Carson's Loyola University webpage for more information about him and to see a list of some of his favorite books.

Learn more about Lying and Deception at the Oxford University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue