Leonard Wayne Sumner (born 18 May 1941) is a

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

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 ...

notable for his work on

normative Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good, desirable, or permissible, and others as bad, undesirable, or impermissible. A Norm (philosophy), norm in this sense means a standard for evaluatin ...

and applied

ethics Ethics is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches inclu ...

political philosophy Political philosophy studies the theoretical and conceptual foundations of politics. It examines the nature, scope, and Political legitimacy, legitimacy of political institutions, such as State (polity), states. This field investigates different ...

, and the philosophy of law. Sumner is University Professor Emeritus of Law and Philosophy at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

Education and career

Educated at the University of Toronto Schools, Sumner received his bachelor's degree from the

in 1962 and his doctoral degree from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in 1965, with a thesis supervised by Stuart Hampshire and Joel Feinberg. Since 2002, he has been a University Professor, the highest academic honour that the university accords its faculty. In 1990 he was elected a

fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of the

Royal Society of Canada The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; , SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities, and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bilingual council of distinguishe ...

. In 2009 he was awarded the Molson Prize by the

Canada Council for the Arts The Canada Council for the Arts (), commonly called the Canada Council, is a Crown corporation established in 1957 as an arts council of the Government of Canada. It is Canada's public arts funder, with a mandate to foster and promote the study a ...

Philosophical work

Sumner is the author of four books, including ''Welfare, Happiness and Ethics''.New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, .

Selected bibliography

Books

* * * *

Chapters in books

* * *

Journal articles

References

*William R. Carter. "Is There Life after Sumner-Death?" ''The Southern Journal of Philosophy'' 21 (1983), pp. 159–176. *James Woods. "Utilitarian Abortion: Sumner on Abortion", ''Dialogue'' 24 (Fall 1985), pp. 671–682. *David Sobel. "Sumner on Welfare", ''Dialogue'' 37 (Summer 1998), pp. 571–577. *Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen. "L.W. Sumner’s Account of Welfare" in (Eds.) Juan José Acero, Francesc Camós Abril, Neftalí Villanueva Fernández ''Actas del III Congreso de la Sociedad Española de Filosofía Analítica'', Granada (2001), 281–285. *Krister Bykvist. "Sumner on Desires and Well-being", ''Canadian Journal of Philosophy'' 32 (2002), pp. 475–490. *John G. Slater. ''Minerva's Aviary: Philosophy at Toronto, 1843-2003'', Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005, , pp. 458–466. *Christopher Hugh Toner. "Aristotelian Well-Being: A Response to L. W. Sumner's Critique", ''Utilitas'' 18 (September 2006), pp. 218–231.

External links

Academic home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sumner, L. W. 1941 births 20th-century Canadian philosophers 21st-century Canadian philosophers Canadian political philosophers Living people Princeton University alumni University of Toronto alumni Academic staff of the University of Toronto Consequentialists Utilitarians