Career
He is Andrew Downey Orrick Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He previously taught for two decades at the University of Michigan"s philosophy department, where he was John Dewey Distinguished University Professor Emeritus. He began his teacher career at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and earned his Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh under Kurt Baier.
He has been a fellow of the American Academy of since 2001.
He and David Velleman are founding co-editors of Philosophers" Imprint. He has written widely on the foundations and history of ethics, and his monographs include: Impartial Reason (1983) The British Moralists and the Internal "Ought": 1640–1740 (1995) Welfare and Rational Care (2002) The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability (2006) He also has written an ethics textbook: Philosophical Ethics (1997).