Samuel Ira Scheffler (born 1951) is a moral and political philosopher, who is University Professor of Philosophy and Law in the Department of Philosophy and the School of Law at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

Education and career

Before moving to NYU in 2008, Scheffler taught for 31 years at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. Scheffler received his PhD from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

, where he was a student of the distinguished philosopher

Thomas Nagel Thomas Nagel (; born July 4, 1937) is an American philosopher. He is the University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University, where he taught from 1980 to 2016. His main areas of philosophical interest are legal philosophy, ...

. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2004. He is the son of the Harvard philosopher

Israel Scheffler Israel Scheffler (November 25, 1923 – February 16, 2014) was an American philosopher of science and of education. Career Scheffler held B.A. and M.A. degrees in psychology from Brooklyn College, an M.H.L. and a D.H.L.(hon.) from the Jewish Th ...

. He is a member of the

Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters ( no, Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi, DNVA) is a learned society based in Oslo, Norway. Its purpose is to support the advancement of science and scholarship in Norway. History The Royal Frederick Univer ...

Philosophical work

His most recent book, ''Death and the Afterlife,'' based on his

Tanner Lectures The Tanner Lectures on Human Values is a multi-university lecture series in the humanities, founded in 1978, at Clare Hall, Cambridge University, by the American scholar Obert Clark Tanner. In founding the lecture, he defined their purpose as fol ...

has generated considerable attention for its argument that much that we value in life depends on the assumption that life will continue long after our death. As the Princeton philosopher Mark Johnston explained in the ''Boston Review'': "In Scheffler’s self-consciously idiosyncratic use of the term, the 'afterlife' is neither a supernatural continuation of this life, nor the result of a deeper naturalistic understanding of the kind of thing we are; it is what John Stuart Mill called 'the onward rush of mankind,' the collective life of humanity after our individual deaths. Scheffler’s thesis is that the onward rush of humankind—the collective afterlife—is much more important to us than we are ordinarily apt to notice." Assessing the argument, the English philosopher John Cottingham wrote: "Scheffler has produced a superb essay -- indeed it seems to me about as good as analytic philosophy gets. It is entirely free from obfuscating jargon and other tiresome tricks of the trade, yet it is meticulously argued and demanding in exactly the right way -- forcing us to think about hitherto unexamined implications of our existing beliefs."

Selected books

*''Why Worry About Future Generations'' (Oxford University Press, 2018) *''Death and the Afterlife'' (Oxford University Press, 2013) *''Equality and Tradition'' (Oxford University Press, 2010) *''Boundaries and Allegiances: Problems of Justice and Responsibility in Liberal Thought'' (Oxford University Press, 2001) *''The Rejection of Consequentialism'' (Oxford University Press 2nd ed., 1994) (editor) *''Human Morality'' (Oxford University Press, 1992)

References

External links

Video interview with Scheffler
{{DEFAULTSORT:Scheffler, Samuel New York University faculty Living people 20th-century American philosophers 21st-century American philosophers 1951 births Princeton University alumni Harvard University alumni University of California, Berkeley faculty Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Analytic philosophers Political philosophers Moral philosophers Members of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters