Alice Crary Explained

Birth Date:	^[1]
Region:	Western philosophy
Era:	Contemporary philosophy
Birth Place:	Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Doctoral Advisor:	John McDowell
Academic Advisors:	Stanley Cavell, Hilary Putnam
Main Interests:	Moral philosophy, philosophy and literature, epistemology, feminist philosophy, feminist epistemology, conceptualism, animal ethics, disability studies, The Frankfurt School, objectivity
Notable Ideas:	Wider objectivity and rationality; critical animal theory; All human beings and animals are inside ethics
Education:	Harvard University (BA) University of Pittsburgh (PhD)

Alice Crary (; born 1967) is an American philosopher who currently holds the positions of University Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Faculty, The New School for Social Research in New York City and Visiting Fellow at Regent's Park College, University of Oxford, U.K. (where she was Professor of Philosophy 2018–19).

Philosophical work

Crary works in the fields of moral philosophy, feminism, animal ethics, and Wittgenstein scholarship. She has written about cognitive disability,^[2] critical theory,^[3] propaganda,^[4] nonhuman animal cognition,^[5] effective altruism,^[6] and the philosophy of literature and narrative.^[7] Her work is especially influenced by Cora Diamond,^[8] John McDowell, Stanley Cavell,^[9] Hilary Putnam, bell hooks,^[10] Kimberlé Crenshaw,^[10] Charles W. Mills, and Peter Winch.

Ethics and moral philosophy

Crary's first monograph, Beyond Moral Judgment,^[11] discusses how literature and feminism help to reframe moral presuppositions. Her Inside Ethics^[12] argues that ethics in disability studies and animal studies is stunted by a lack of moral imagination, caused by a narrow understanding of rationality and by a philosophy severed from literature and art.^{[13] [14] [15]}

Feminism

Crary's work on feminism is critical of standard views of objectivity in analytic philosophy and post-structuralism. In her view, both traditions mistakenly conceive of objectivity as value-neutral, and thus incompatible with ethical and political perspectives.^[10] According to Crary, these "ethically-loaded perspectives" invite both cognitive and ethical appreciation for the lives of women, in ways that count as objective knowledge.^[16] Like her moral philosophy, her feminist conception of objectivity is informed by Wittgenstein, who she understands as proposing a "wide" view of objectivity: one in which affective responses are not merely non-cognitive persuasive manipulations but reveal real forms of suffering that give us a more objective understanding of the world.^[17]

Wittgenstein

Crary is associated with the so-called "therapeutic"^[18] or "resolute"^[19] reading of Wittgenstein. In her co-edited collection of essays of such readings, The New Wittgenstein, her own contribution argues against the standard use-theory readings of Wittgenstein that often render his thought as politically conservative and implausible.^[20] Since then, she has contributed to numerous collections of Wittgenstein scholarship, including Emotions and Understanding^[21] and interpretations of Wittgenstein's On Certainty.^[22]

Animals in Ethics and Politics

Crary has promoted (e.g., in her 2024 Cambridge Union opposition^[23]) the view that humans and animals have moral worth above and beyond any quantitative valuation.^[24] This view is further expounded in the 2022 monograph Animal Crisis: A New Critical Theory co-written with Lori Gruen.

Public philosophy

Crary frequently participates in and organizes events for public discussion,^{[25] [26] [27]} such as public debates on the valuation of life^[28] and the treatment of animals and the cognitively disabled.^{[29] [30] [31]} She has also written for the New York Times.^{[32] [33]}

Crary has contributed to international educational activities focusing on the intersection of philosophy with critical theory and political philosophy. These include summer philosophy workshops at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies/New School for Social Research Europe Democracy and Diversity Institute in Wroclaw, Poland,^[34] and the Kritische Theorie in Berlin Critical Theory Summer School (Progress, Regression, and Social Change) in Berlin, Germany,^[35] which she co-organized with Rahel Jaeggi.

Personal life

Crary was a 1983-4 exchange student with Youth for Understanding in the southern German town of Achern. She was also a national champion rower at the Lakeside School (Seattle) in Seattle, Washington and placed 6th in the Junior Women's Eight at the 1985 World Rowing Junior Championships in Brandenburg, Germany.^[36] In the 1980s, after studying liberation theology with Harvey Cox at Harvard Divinity School, Crary researched Christian base communities in southern Mexico and Guatemala. In the early 1990s, she was a teacher at the Collegio Americano in Quito, Ecuador.

Bibliography

Books – monographs

• Animal Crisis (Polity, 2022 (co-written with Lori Gruen), translated into Spanish (Ediciones Catedra, 2023) and forthcoming in 2024 in French (Vrin). Discussed at/on Yale Law School, Living Philosophy, New Books Network, The Philosopher, Wild Connection, Knowing Animals Podcast, Factually Podcast, Storytelling Animals Podcast, The Animal Turn Podcast, Species United Podcast, The Annual Weissbourd Conference, University of Chicago (May 2023).
• Inside Ethics: On the Demands of Moral Thought (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2016). (Reviewed in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews and Hypatia as well as Environmental Philosophy, the Nordic Wittgenstein Review, La Vie des Ideés, Choice, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, and The Journal of Animal Ethics). The book's philosophical content and linkage with liberal arts education are discussed in recent interviews at the APA blog and Social Research Matters as well as Il Sole 24 Ore (in Italian). Inside Ethics is also the subject of a 2018 Symposium at The Syndicate Network featuring commentary by Stanley Hauerwas, Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen, Aaron Klink, and Avner Baz, with extensive author responses (convened and edited by Sean Larson, Timothy J. Furry, and Ethan D. Smith).
• Beyond Moral Judgment (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2007). (Reviewed in Analytic Philosophy, Choice, The European Journal of Philosophy, Ethics (twice), Hypatia, Metapsychology Online Reviews, Mind, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Philo, and The Pluralist and discussed at a 2008 "Author Meets Critics" session at the Eastern Division Meeting of the APA.)

Books – edited volumes

• The Good it Promises, the Harm it Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2023 (co-edited with Carol J. Adams and Lori Gruen)). Foreword by Amia Srinivasan, with contributions by animal activists and academics criticizing the impact of effective altruism on the pro-animal movement and overlapping social justice movements. Reviewed in Sciences Humaines, EcoLit Books, L’Amorce: Revue contre le spécisme, oxford public philosophy, and Mind)
• Here and There: Sites of Philosophy by Stanley Cavell (Harvard University Press, 2022, co-editor with Nancy Bauer and Sandra Laugier, forthcoming in Spanish translation (Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza (PUZ)). Reviewed in The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The LA Review of Books, and The London Review of Books.
• Wittgenstein and the Moral Life: Essays in Honor of Cora Diamond (Cambridge, MIT Press, 2007).
• Reading Cavell (New York, Routledge, 2006 (co-edited with Sanford Shieh)).
• The New Wittgenstein (New York, Routledge, 2000 (co-edited with Rupert Read)).

See also

• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers
• List of female philosophers

External links

• New School for Social Research Homepage
• Institute for Advanced Study Homepage

Notes and References

1. Web site: Crary, Alice 1967- (Alice Marguerite Crary) | Encyclopedia.com. www.encyclopedia.com.
2. Book: The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability. 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190622879.001.0001. 2018. 9780190622879. Cureton. Adam. Wasserman. David T.
3. Wittgenstein Goes to Frankfurt (and Finds Something Useful to Say). Nordic Wittgenstein Review. 7. 1. June 2018. Crary. Alice.
4. Putnam and Propaganda. Alice. Crary. October 1, 2017. Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal. 38. 2. 385–398. 10.5840/gfpj201738220.
5. Dogs and Concepts. Alice. Crary. April 14, 2012. Philosophy. 87. 2. 215–237. 10.1017/S0031819112000010. 170697605.
6. Against Effective Altruism. Alice. Crary. Summer 2021. Radical Philosophy. 2. 10 . 33–43.
7. 10.1111/j.1467-8675.2012.00691.x. W.G. Sebald and the Ethics of Narrative. Constellations. 19. 3. 494–508. 2012. Crary. Alice.
8. Web site: Wittgenstein and the Moral Life. The MIT Press.
9. Web site: Reading Cavell. Routledge & CRC Press.
10. Alice Crary: The methodological is political / Radical Philosophy. Alice. Crary. Radical Philosophy . 2018 . 202 . 47–60 .
11. Web site: Beyond Moral Judgment — Alice Crary. www.hup.harvard.edu.
12. Web site: Inside Ethics — Alice Crary. www.hup.harvard.edu.
13. Web site: Alice Crary On Her Newest Book, Inside Ethics. September 7, 2016.
14. Web site: Why Philosophy Needs Literature: Interview with Alice Crary. Skye. Cleary. November 2, 2016.
15. Web site: Inside Ethics | Syndicate.
16. Feminist Thought and Rational Authority: Getting Things in Perspective. Alice. Crary. August 24, 2015. New Literary History. 46. 2. 287–308. 10.1353/nlh.2015.0010. 143046249.
17. See "What Do Feminists Want in an Epistemology?," in Feminist Interpretations of Ludwig Wittgenstein, ed. Naomi Scheman and Peg O'Connor (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania, 2002), pp. 112–113.
18. Alice Crary, introduction to The New Wittgenstein, ed. Alice Crary and Rupert Read (New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 1.
19. Silver Bronzo, "The Resolute Reading and Its Critics: An Introduction to the Literature," Wittgenstein-Studien 3 (2012), p. 46.
20. Book: Crary, Alice. Wittgenstein's Philosophy in Relation to Political Thought. Alice. Crary. Rupert J.. Read. August 9, 2000. Routledge. 118–145. PhilPapers.
21. Book: Emotions and Understanding - Wittgensteinian Perspectives | Y. Gustafsson | Palgrave Macmillan. 2009. Palgrave Macmillan UK. 10.1057/9780230584464. 978-1-349-29958-4. www.palgrave.com. Gustafsson. Ylva. Camilla. Kronqvist. Michael. McEachrane.
22. Book: Readings of Wittgenstein's On Certainty. D.. Moyal-Sharrock. W.. Brenner. August 9, 2005. Palgrave Macmillan UK. 10.1057/9780230505346. 978-0-230-53552-7. www.palgrave.com.
23. Web site: Prof. Alice Crary:This House Believes You Can Put A Number On Human Life. The Cambridge Union. 11 February 2024 .
24. Web site: Animals. Political Concepts: A Critical Lexicon.
25. Web site: Five Questions. Anchor FM.
26. Web site: ETHICS, WITTGENSTEIN AND THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL, AND CAVELL. 3:16.
27. Web site: Social Visibility. Social Visibility.
28. Web site: Prof. Alice Crary:This House Believes You Can Put A Number On Human Life. The Cambridge Union. 11 February 2024 .
29. Web site: Can trophy hunting ever be justified?. Michael. Petrou. Alice. Crary. Prospect magazine. January 24, 2018.
30. Web site: Comparisons Between Cognitively Disabled Human Beings and Non-human Animals: Do They Have a Role in Ethics?. University Center for Human Values.
31. Web site: How Much Should We Care About Animals? with Alice Crary, Elizabeth Harman, Dale Jamieson, and Shelly Kagan. https://web.archive.org/web/20210411132053/https://academyforteachers.org/master-class/animal-ethics/. 2021-04-11. dead. The Academy for Teachers.
32. News: Opinion | Stanley Cavell and the American Contradiction. Nancy. Bauer. Alice. Crary. Sandra. Laugier. The New York Times. July 2, 2018.
33. Web site: The Faulty Logic of the 'Math Wars'. Alice. Crary. W. Stephen. Wilson. June 16, 2013.
34. Web site: Transregional Center for Democratic Studies. Transregional Center for Democratic Studies.
35. Web site: Progress, Regression and Social Change.
36. Web site: Alice CRARY. worldrowing.com.