Shelly Kagan

Background

Kagan was born on February 2, 1954, in Chicago, Illinois, to Abe and Rosaline Kagan. He grew up in the Chicago area and later pursued undergraduate study in Connecticut before beginning graduate work in New Jersey.

His early intellectual interests included both Judaism and philosophy. At Wesleyan University he studied philosophy and religion, and during college he considered rabbinical training. His eventual decision to become a philosopher connected religious questions about value and obligation with the analytic study of moral theory.

Education

Kagan studied at Wesleyan University from 1972 to 1976, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy and religion, summa cum laude, with honors. Wesleyan, founded in 1831 in Middletown, Connecticut, is a liberal-arts university whose curriculum combines broad humanistic study with advanced specialized work. Kagan's undergraduate education joined philosophical analysis with the study of religion, two concerns that remained visible in his later work.

He pursued graduate education at Princeton University from 1977 to 1981, receiving a Master of Arts degree in 1979 and completing a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1982. Princeton's philosophy department has long been associated with analytic philosophy and moral and political thought. Kagan's doctoral dissertation, The Limits of Morality, was supervised by Thomas Nagel and became the basis for his first major book.

Career

Kagan began his academic career as an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh from 1981 to 1986. The university, founded in 1787, is a major research institution whose modern development included strong programs in the humanities, sciences, and professional education.

He joined the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1986. He served as assistant professor of philosophy from 1986 to 1989, associate professor from 1989 to 1994, and professor from 1994 to 1995. UIC developed as a public urban research university serving Chicago and the wider metropolitan region, a setting that linked philosophical teaching with a broad public university mission.

Kagan joined Yale University in 1995. He was Henry R. Luce Professor of Social Thought and Ethics from 1995 to 2004 and became Clark Professor of Philosophy in 2004. Yale, founded in 1701, is one of the oldest American universities and maintains a long tradition of philosophical, theological, and humanistic scholarship. At Yale, Kagan's research and teaching have centered on normative ethics, social and political philosophy, moral skepticism, well-being, desert, animal ethics, and death.

His introductory course on death was recorded for Open Yale Courses and became widely used by audiences beyond the university. The course led to his book Death, while his broader scholarship has examined consequentialism, deontological constraints, moral intuitions, objective morality, and the comparative moral status of humans and animals.

Achievements

• Kagan developed influential analyses of normative ethics, including the relationship between consequentialist reasoning, moral constraints, options, responsibility, and the limits of moral demandingness.

• His book Death and the associated Open Yale Courses lectures brought philosophical analysis of mortality, the possibility of an afterlife, the badness of death, and the meaning of human finitude to a broad international audience.

• His scholarship on animal ethics examined how the interests and moral status of animals should be counted in ethical deliberation.

• He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016 in recognition of his contributions to philosophy and moral theory.

Works

More photos

• monograph

  • The Limits of Morality

    (Kagan's first major book challenges two central assumptio...)

    1989
  • Death

    (Based on Kagan's Yale course, this book examines mortalit...)

    2012
  • Answering Moral Skepticism

    (An examination of arguments against objective morality, i...)

    2023
  • How to Count Animals, more or less

    (A work in animal ethics examining the moral status of ani...)

    2019
  • The Geometry of Desert

    (A study of moral desert that analyzes how judgments about...)

    2012

• textbook

  • Normative Ethics

    (A systematic survey of normative ethical theories, includ...)

    1997

Religion

Kagan identifies with Judaism and has described Jewish life as important to him personally. During his undergraduate years at Wesleyan University, he studied religion and considered becoming a rabbi before turning to philosophy.

His religious outlook is compatible with a secular approach to moral philosophy. Kagan has argued that morality does not require belief in God or an immaterial soul, while maintaining that questions of value, dignity, and right and wrong remain serious subjects for rational inquiry. Judaism's diverse interpretive traditions, in which religious commitment is not defined by a single universal dogma, provide a context for the distinction he draws between religious identity and philosophical argument.

Views

Kagan's philosophical work defends the possibility of serious moral reasoning within a secular and naturalistic worldview. His writings examine whether morality places limits on what people may do, how demanding morality may be, what makes a life go well, and whether moral claims can be objectively true.

His work on normative ethics engages consequentialist and deontological theories, including questions about moral constraints, options, responsibility, desert, and the use of moral intuitions. In Answering Moral Skepticism, he argues that skepticism about objective morality does not establish that moral facts are impossible or that belief in morality is intellectually irrational.

Kagan's philosophy of death treats death as a significant deprivation because it removes possible future goods. In his discussions of souls and the afterlife, he rejects the need for an immaterial self as a foundation for moral value while maintaining that human life, moral responsibility, and ethical concern remain philosophically important. His work on animal ethics holds that animals have moral standing, while also examining whether equal consideration requires identical treatment of humans and animals.

Membership

Kagan served on the editorial board of Ethics from 1991 to 2010 and on the advisory board of The Philosophical Gourmet Report from 2001 onward. He also participated in professional service for the American Philosophical Association, including the advisory committee to the Eastern Division program committee from 1992 to 1995. These organizations support philosophical scholarship through journals, professional meetings, evaluation of graduate programs, and the exchange of research.

• Served on the advisory board.

  The Philosophical Gourmet Report , United States

  2001 - present

• Served on the advisory committee to the Eastern Division program committee.

  American Philosophical Association , United States

  1992 - 1995

Personality

Kagan's teaching and public lectures are characterized by a direct, analytical presentation of difficult moral and existential questions. He has emphasized that philosophical instruction should encourage students to think through arguments independently and that reasonable people may disagree about fundamental issues.

Quotes from others about the person

• The American Academy of Arts and Sciences describes Kagan as a philosopher, ethicist, and educator whose research focuses on analytic moral philosophy, especially normative ethics.

Interests

• Animal ethics, moral philosophy, the philosophy of death, and the study of religion.

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Thomas Nagel

Connections

Kagan is the son of Abe and Rosaline Kagan. He married Gina Novick on June 2, 1985. They have three children: Elana, Rebecca, and Ari.

Father:

Abe Kagan

Mother:

Rosaline Kagan

Spouse:

Gina Novick

child:

Elana Kagan

child:

Ari Kagan

child:

Rebecca Kagan

References

• Yale University Department of Philosophy Faculty Profile Documents Kagan's areas of interest in ethics and social and political philosophy, his principal books, his position at Yale University, and his continuing academic affiliation.
  2026
• Shelly Kagan Curriculum Vitae Documents Kagan's education, academic appointments, awards, professional service, research interests, and dissertation under Thomas Nagel.
  2016
• American Academy of Arts and Sciences: Shelly Kagan Documents Kagan's election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and summarizes his contributions to analytic moral philosophy, normative ethics, moral theory, and the philosophy of death.
  2016