Whitehead Hall, CB #3408
David Decosimo is Associate Dean and Associate Professor in the School of Civic Life and Leadership. Prior to joining UNC, he spent nearly a decade at BU where he was Director of the Institute for Philosophy & Religion, Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics, and Affiliated Faculty in the Department of Philosophy. He received his Ph.D. and an MA from Princeton University under Jeffrey Stout, where he also worked closely with John Cooper in ancient philosophy and Calvin Normore in medieval. He received an MA from the University of Chicago and his BA from the University of Virginia, where he was an Echols Scholar.
His research and teaching focus on ethics, religion, and politics, especially virtue ethics, philosophy of religion, ancient and medieval ethics, Islamic philosophy, & political philosophy. His first book, Ethics as a Work of Charity: Thomas Aquinas and Pagan Virtue (Stanford University Press, 2014), won the international Manfred Lautenschlaeger Prize from Heidelberg University and was reviewed in two dozen journals in philosophy, theology, and religious studies. His scholarly articles on figures such as Augustine, al-Ghazālī, and Peter Abelard, and topics ranging from the ethics of torture and Islamic ideals of political freedom to the theory and method of comparative ethics and the metaethics of intrinsic goodness have appeared in scholarly journals in religion, law, theology, and philosophy.
Alongside his enduring interests in philosophical questions raised by ethical and religious diversity and in the ongoing philosophical interest of figures such as Aquinas and Aristotle, he is lately focused on two broad areas of research: freedom, domination, and recognition, and the nature and place of inquiry, wonder, & contemplation in flourishing human lives, institutions, and communities.