Alice Crary is University Distinguished Professor (Philosophy, Liberal Studies and Gender & Sexuality Studies) and also Visiting Fellow at Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford. She was Chair of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research (2014-2017) and Founding Co-Director of the Graduate Certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies (2014-2017).
A moral and social philosopher, Crary has written widely on issues in metaethics, moral psychology and normative ethics, philosophy and literature, philosophy and feminism, critical animal studies, critical environmental studies, critical disability studies, and Critical Theory as well as on figures such as Austin, Cavell, Diamond, Foot, Murdoch and Wittgenstein. Her most recent book (co-authored with Lori Gruen) Animal Crisis: A New Critical Theory (Polity, 2022) argues for a radical reimagining of our relationship with animals via seven case studies of complex human-animal relations. Pioneering primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall commented that the work “presents the reader with the most thorough research into the ways in which animal lives are understood.”
Crary’s previous book, Inside Ethics: On the Demands of Moral Thought (Harvard University Press, 2016), is a monograph on the representation of animals and humans in ethical discourse. The book has been described as “a sweeping challenge to several widely shared orthodoxies in metaphysics and moral philosophy.” Crary is also known for Beyond Moral Judgment (Harvard, 2007), which challenges received images of the nature and difficulty of moral thought, bringing out the moral dimension of all language. While finishing her doctorate in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, she co-edited and wrote the introduction to The New Wittgenstein (Routledge, 2000), which continues to influence debates over Wittgenstein’s philosophy.