James Mackey

About James

I am a postdoctoral researcher in philosophy at University College Dublin, Ireland. I completed my Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Western Ontario in London ON, Canada. I work on the history of philosophy, in particular the history of ethics during the 17th and 18th centuries. However, I am also interested in the way the ideas I research intersect with contemporary moral philosophy. 

I currently work on the ERC funded “BMoral” project, a project which aims to reconsider the history of 18th century British moral philosophy using a wider range of sources than existing histories. The project seeks to pay attention to the contributions of women and other underrepresented figures in the history of philosophy, taking seriously the overwhelming evidence that women authors participated in the moral debates of this period. 

My doctoral research concerned the recovery of Stoicism in the 17th century. I argued that properly understanding Stoicism in this time period involves understanding Stoicism distinctly from the way we understand it today. We can do this by referencing the work of the “Neo-Stoics” who published a number of commentaries reinterpreting Stoicism in the late 16th and early 17th century. Most of my work is based around the idea that, once we recognize the different senses of “Stoicism” in these texts, we can reinterpret the way Neo-Stoicism figured into the moral philosophies of Descartes, Malebranche, Norris, Astell, Princess Elisabeth, Damaris Masham, John Locke and other 17th century thinkers.