News & Events Niko Kolodny To Speak on "Why Be Rational?" at Amherst College Nov. 3

October 13, 2005
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Niko Kolodny, assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley, will lecture on the question "Why Be Rational?" at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 3, in Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115) at Amherst College. Organized by the Amherst College Department of Philosophy and funded by the Forry and Micken Fund in Philosophy and Science, Kolodny's talk is free and open to the public.

Kolodny's academic concentration lies in moral and political philosophy. He has served as an assistant professor of philosophy at Harvard University and as a research associate at the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. His publications include "Why Be Rational?" (Mind, 2005) and "Love as Valuing a Relationship" (Philosophical Review, 2003).

Kolodny received his B.A. from Williams College in 1994, an M.A. from Oxford in 1996 and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 2003. He returned to Berkeley as a professor in 2005, teaching courses on moral objectivity, John Rawls and the social contract, and utilitarian traditions in political thought. His current work focuses on partiality, rationality, promises and Rousseau.

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