Professor - (Ph.D. - Harvard University)
On Sabbatical Spring 2003

Henry S. Richardson earned graduate degrees in law and in public policy at Harvard before getting his Ph.D. there (under John Rawls) in 1986. Dr. Richardson has held research fellowships sponsored by Georgetown University, the Program in Ethics and the Professions at Harvard University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and has been Visiting Scholar in the Department of Clinical Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Richardson has published articles on the history of ethics and practical reasoning (Aristotle, Plato, Hegel, Sidgwick, and Dewey) and in ethical theory, moral psychology, political philosophy, and the theory of practical reasoning. Dr. Richardson's books have dealt with practical reasoning by individuals and, more recently, by citizens collectively. His newest book, Democratic Autonomy: Public Reasoning about the Ends of Policy (Oxford University Press), was published in August 2002. He is also co-editor of the 5-volume collection, The Philosophy of Rawls.

The current focus of Dr. Richardson's work is on moral reasoning and ethical theory. In ethical theory, he has aimed to expound and defend a type of ethical theory that is focused on the rightness and wrongness of actions, but is neither deontological nor consequentialist. He is also interested in how moral norms justifiably change.
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