John McDowell

John Henry McDowell (born 1942) is a South African philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford, and now Distinguished University Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written on metaphysics, epistemology, ancient philosophy and metaethics, his most influential work has been in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. McDowell understands philosophy as therapeutic, aiming, in Ludwig Wittgenstein's phrase, to leave everything as it is, a form of philosophical quietism that offers redescriptions of confusing cases rather than explanatory theories of how thought and language relate to the world. He has defended a form of Aristotelian naturalism, drawing on Hegel and Wittgenstein, against what he regards as an overly reductive scientistic naturalism common in contemporary philosophy. He was one of three recipients of the 2010 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award and is a fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the British Academy.