Kyle Johannsen is a Canadian philosopher. He is the author of a A Conceptual Investigation of Justice (2018) and Wild Animal Ethics (2020). Johannsen specialises in animal and environmental ethics, as well as political and social philosophy.[1] He is presently affiliated with Trent University, Wilfrid Laurier University, and Queen's University.
Johannesen read for a BA in philosophy with a minor in history at York University from 2003 to 2007, before reading for an MA in philosophy at the same institution from 2007 to 2009. He read for a PhD in philosophy at Queen's University from 2010 to 2015. Johannesen took up visiting assistant professorships at Saint Mary's University, Halifax from 2016 to 2017, and then at Trent University from 2017 to 2018. He remained a course instructor at Trent from 2018, and also became a course instructor at Wilfrid Laurier University in 2019. In 2020, Johannsen became an adjunct assistant professor at Queen's, as well as a fellow in Animals in Politics, Philosophy, Law, and Ethics (APPLE) at the university.[2]
Johannsen published A Conceptual Investigation of Justice in 2018.[3] It was the subject of a symposium at the Canadian Philosophical Association's 2018 meeting; the presented papers were later published in .[4]
Johannsen's Wild Animal Ethics was published in 2020. It investigates whether humans have a duty to reduce wild animal suffering from a deontological perspective. A symposium was held by APPLE on the book at Queen's University in the same year,[5] with the contributing papers later published in Philosophia.[6] The book was reviewed by Thomas Lepeltier in the French-language popular science magazine Sciences Humaines.[7]
In 2025, Johannsen is set to publish Positive Duties to Wild Animals, a collection of essays by various scholars that aims to advance the interventionist literature on wild animal suffering by employing diverse theoretical frameworks, including some that have not previously been used to establish positive duties toward wild animals.[8]