Alice Crary

Alice Crary (

Crary's first monograph, Beyond Moral Judgment,[13] discusses how literature and feminism help to reframe moral presuppositions. Her Inside Ethics^[14] argues that ethics in disability studies and animal studies is stunted by a lack of moral imagination, caused by a narrow understanding of rationality and by a philosophy severed from literature and art.^[15][16][17]

Feminism

Crary's work on feminism is critical of standard views of

Crary is associated with the so-called "therapeutic"[20] or "resolute"^[21] reading of Wittgenstein. In her co-edited collection of essays of such readings, The New Wittgenstein, her own contribution argues against the standard use-theory readings of Wittgenstein that often render his thought as politically conservative and implausible.^[22] Since then, she has contributed to numerous collections of Wittgenstein scholarship, including Emotions and Understanding^[23] and interpretations of Wittgenstein's On Certainty.^[24]

Animals in Ethics and Politics

Crary has promoted (e.g., in her 2024 Cambridge Union opposition^[25]) the view that humans and animals have moral worth above and beyond any quantitative valuation.^[26] This view is further expounded in the 2022 monograph Animal Crisis: A New Critical Theory co-written with Lori Gruen.

Public philosophy

Crary frequently participates in and organizes events for public discussion,^[27][28][29] such as public debates on the valuation of life^[30] and the treatment of animals and the cognitively disabled.^[31][32][33] She has also written for the New York Times.^[34][35]

Crary has contributed to international educational activities focusing on the intersection of philosophy with critical theory and political philosophy. These include summer philosophy workshops at

• Animal Crisis (Polity, 2022 (co-written with Lori Gruen), translated into Spanish (Ediciones Catedra, 2023) and forthcoming in 2024 in French (Vrin). Discussed at/on Yale Law School, Living Philosophy, New Books Network, The Philosopher, Wild Connection, Knowing Animals Podcast, Factually Podcast, Storytelling Animals Podcast, The Animal Turn Podcast, Species United Podcast, The Annual Weissbourd Conference, University of Chicago (May 2023).
• Inside Ethics: On the Demands of Moral Thought (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2016). (Reviewed in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews and Hypatia as well as Environmental Philosophy, the Nordic Wittgenstein Review, La Vie des Ideés, Choice, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, and The Journal of Animal Ethics). The book's philosophical content and linkage with liberal arts education are discussed in recent interviews at the APA blog and Social Research Matters as well as Il Sole 24 Ore (in Italian). Inside Ethics is also the subject of a 2018 Symposium at The Syndicate Network featuring commentary by Stanley Hauerwas, Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen, Aaron Klink, and Avner Baz, with extensive author responses (convened and edited by Sean Larson, Timothy J. Furry, and Ethan D. Smith).
• Beyond Moral Judgment (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2007). (Reviewed in Analytic Philosophy, Choice, The European Journal of Philosophy, Ethics (twice), Hypatia, Metapsychology Online Reviews, Mind, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Philo, and The Pluralist and discussed at a 2008 "Author Meets Critics" session at the Eastern Division Meeting of the APA.)

Books – edited volumes

• The Good it Promises, the Harm it Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2023 (co-edited with Carol J. Adams and Lori Gruen)). Foreword by Amia Srinivasan, with contributions by animal activists and academics criticizing the impact of effective altruism on the pro-animal movement and overlapping social justice movements. Reviewed in Sciences Humaines, EcoLit Books, L’Amorce: Revue contre le spécisme, oxford public philosophy, and Mind)
• Here and There: Sites of Philosophy by Stanley Cavell (Harvard University Press, 2022, co-editor with Nancy Bauer and Sandra Laugier, forthcoming in Spanish translation (Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza (PUZ)). Reviewed in The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The LA Review of Books, and The London Review of Books.
• Wittgenstein and the Moral Life: Essays in Honor of Cora Diamond (Cambridge, MIT Press, 2007).
• Reading Cavell (New York, Routledge, 2006 (co-edited with Sanford Shieh)).
• The New Wittgenstein (New York, Routledge, 2000 (co-edited with Rupert Read)).

See also

• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers
• List of female philosophers

References