Philosopher

Saul Smilansky

I am a Professor at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Haifa, Israel. I work primarily on normative and applied ethics, the free will problem, and the meaning of life. In normative and applied ethics and the MOL I am particularly interested in moral paradoxes and other forms of "crazy ethics", moral theory, justice, the role of self-deception and illusion in our lives, population ethics, punishment, egalitarianism, moral complaint and hypocrisy, the influence of technology on the future of morality, gratitude, and the significance of contribution. On free will I have done various things. My main efforts have been, first, to open up the debate on the compatibility question to a dualistic or pluralistic approach that sees both compatibilism and hard determinism (or other forms of free will and moral responsibility denialism) as partly valid and seeks to integrate them. Second, to explore Illusionism, the view that illusion is central and, in many ways, positive in the free will problem. I am the author of Free Will and Illusion (Oxford University Press 2000), 10 Moral Paradoxes (Blackwell 2007), and over ninety papers in philosophical journals and edited collections.
I received my B.A. from Tel-Aviv University and my D.Phil from Oxford University (Magdalen College).