Annette Claire Baier (

née The birth name is the name of the person given upon their birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name or to the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a births registe ...

Stoop; 11 October 1929 – 2 November 2012) was a New Zealand

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

and Hume scholar, focused in particular on Hume's

moral psychology Moral psychology is the study of human thought and behavior in ethical contexts. Historically, the term "moral psychology" was used relatively narrowly to refer to the study of moral development. This field of study is interdisciplinary between th ...

. She was well known also for her contributions to

feminist philosophy Feminist philosophy is an approach to philosophy from a feminist perspective and also the employment of philosophical methods to feminist topics and questions. Feminist philosophy involves both reinterpreting philosophical texts and methods in ...

and to the philosophy of mind, where she was strongly influenced by her former colleague,

Wilfrid Sellars Wilfrid Stalker Sellars (; May 20, 1912 – July 2, 1989) was an American philosopher and prominent developer of critical realism who "revolutionized both the content and the method of philosophy in the United States". His work has had a profou ...

Biography

Baier earned bachelor's and master's degrees at the

University of Otago The University of Otago () is a public university, public research university, research collegiate university based in Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand. Founded in 1869, Otago is New Zealand's oldest university and one of the oldest universities in ...

in her native

Dunedin Dunedin ( ; ) is the second-most populous city in the South Island of New Zealand (after Christchurch), and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from ("fort of Edin"), the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of S ...

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

. In 1952 she went to

Somerville College, Oxford Somerville College is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. It was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. It began admitting men in 1994. The colle ...

, where she earned her PhD and met fellow philosophers

Philippa Foot Philippa Ruth Foot (; 3 October 1920 – 3 October 2010) was an English philosopher and one of the founders of contemporary virtue ethics. Her work was inspired by Aristotelian ethics. Along with Judith Jarvis Thomson, she is credited with in ...

and

G.E.M. Anscombe Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (; 18 March 1919 – 5 January 2001), usually cited as G. E. M. Anscombe or Elizabeth Anscombe, was a British analytic philosopher. She wrote on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, philosophic ...

. For most of her career she taught in the philosophy department at the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...

, having moved there from

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

. She retired to Dunedin. She was former President of the Eastern Division of the

American Philosophical Association The American Philosophical Association (APA) is the main professional organization for philosophers in the United States. Founded in 1900, its mission is to promote the exchange of ideas among philosophers, to encourage creative and scholarl ...

, an office reserved for the elite of her profession. Baier received an honorary Doctor of Literature from the University of Otago in 1999. Her husband was the philosopher Kurt Baier.

Ethics

Baier's approach to ethics is that women and men make their decisions about right and wrong based on different value systems: men take their moral decisions according to an idea of

justice In its broadest sense, justice is the idea that individuals should be treated fairly. According to the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', the most plausible candidate for a core definition comes from the ''Institutes (Justinian), Inst ...

, while women are motivated by a sense of

trust Trust often refers to: * Trust (social science), confidence in or dependence on a person or quality It may also refer to: Business and law * Trust (law), a legal relationship in which one person holds property for another's benefit * Trust (bu ...

or caring. The history of philosophy having been overwhelmingly compiled by men, she suggests, leads to a body of thought which apparently ignores the role of nurture and trust in human philosophy.Annette Baier (1929 -)
fro
Open2.net

Bibliography

Books

* * * , including especially "What Do Women Want in an Ethical Theory?" and "The Need For More Than Justice". * * * *

Chapters in books

* *

References

External links

*
Trust
'' 1991

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

by Annette Baier *
Obituary: Annette C. Baier
' in the ''University Times'' of the

University Of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...

*
Annette Baier, 1929-2012
In Memoriam'' posted by The Hume Society {{DEFAULTSORT:Baier, Annette 1929 births 2012 deaths 20th-century American philosophers 21st-century American philosophers Writers from Dunedin 20th-century New Zealand philosophers University of Otago alumni Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford Hume scholars Moral psychologists New Zealand women philosophers Animal welfare scholars Philosophers from Pennsylvania New Zealand women writers