Craig Duncan

I grew up in Springfield, MO.  After graduating high school, I attended Brown University in Providence, RI, where I majored in Philosophy and graduated in 1991.  I then spent the next two years traveling and teaching English as a Second Language in Seoul, Berlin, and Boston, before going to the University of Michigan in 1993 to start my PhD.  There I wrote my dissertation in the field of political philosophy, on the topic of freedom of religion.  I received my PhD in 2000, and after staying on at the University of Michigan for a year as a visiting professor of Philosophy, I came to Ithaca College in the Fall of 2001.

I specialize in political philosophy, ethics, and the philosophy of religion.  Here at Ithaca College, I have created several courses, such as  Global Ethics, Philosophical Problems in the Law, and Difference and Community (a course on multiculturalism and toleration).  My current research interests lie in exploring issues connected with Pascal’s Wager (a pragmatic argument for belief in God), in exploring moral theories rooted in an ideal of respect for human dignity, and in exploring the prospects for extending dignity-based theories of morality to encompass the well-being of non-human animals.