Background
Wilson, Margaret Dauler was born on January 29, 1939 in Pittsburgh. Daughter of Lee Van Voorhis and Margaret (Hodge) D.
Wilson, Margaret Dauler was born on January 29, 1939 in Pittsburgh. Daughter of Lee Van Voorhis and Margaret (Hodge) D.
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Wilson earned an Bachelor of Arts from Vassar College in 1960 and received her Doctor of Philosophy in philosophy from Harvard University five years later. Wilson was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Harvard in 1960-1961 and then studied at Oxford University in 1963-1964.
While at Harvard, At Harvard, she was a student of Burton Dreben. Wilson spent the early years of her career as an assistant professor of philosophy at Columbia University (1965-1967), and went on to teach at the Rockefeller Institute between 1967 and 1970. In 1970, she joined the Princeton faculty as associate professor of philosophy.
Wilson was promoted to full professor in 1975, and in 1998 was finally named Stuart Professor of Philosophy.
During her tenure at Princeton she shared a department with other prominent philosophers including David Lewis, Saul Kripke, Harry Frankfurt, Gil Harman, Bas van Fraassen, Paul Benacerraf and Richard Jeffrey. Wilson taught courses in Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley and other early modern philosophers as well as the Philosophy of Religion.
In her scholarship, Wilson focused on the history of early modern philosophy, the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of mind, and the theory of perception. Author of Descartes (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), as well as of many articles on 17th and 18th-century metaphysics and epistemology, some of which are collected in her, Ideas and Mechanism (1999), Wilson was also editor of The Essential Descartes (1969) and coeditor (with Doctorate Brock and R Kuhns) of Philosophy: An Introduction (1972).
Over the course of her distinguished career, Margaret Dauler Wilson was awarded many honors, and was among only a handful of prominent female philosophers in a field overwhelmingly dominated by mentor
Active in professional organizations, Wilson served as vice-president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association (APA) for 1993-1994 and for 1994-1995. She also served on a number of APA committees, including the Subcommittee on the Status of Women in the Profession. Wilson served as a juror for the Arts and Humanities for the 1997 Heinz Foundation awards.
Wilson died at the age of 59 on August 27, 1998.
Since 2002, the Margaret Dauler Wilson Biennial Philosophy Conference have been held in her honor. Several of her students are prominent philosophers today, including: Janet Broughton, Rae Helen Langton, Christia Mercer, and Lisa Downing.
Member Planning Board Franklin Township, New Jersey, 1988-1992, Environmental Commission, 1988-1995. Fellow American Academy Arts and Sciences. Member American Philosophical Association (Vice-President eastern division 1993-1994, president eastern division 1994-1995), Leibniz Society North America (president 1986-1990), International Berkeley Society.
Daughter of Lee Van Voorhis and Margaret (Hodge) Daughter of. Married Emmett Wilson, Junior, June 12, 1962.