Julia Annas


Julia Elizabeth Annas is a British philosopher who has taught in the United States for the last quarter-century. She is Regents Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of Arizona.

Education and career

Annas graduated from Oxford University in 1968 with a B.A. and from Harvard University with an A.M. and a Ph.D.. She was a Fellow and Tutor at St Hugh's College, Oxford for fifteen years before joining the faculty at the University of Arizona in 1986, where she taught until her retirement, apart from one year as a professor at Columbia University.
She specializes in the study of ancient Greek philosophy|Greek philosophy], including ethics, psychology, and epistemology. She is the founder and former editor of the annual journal Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy. She is married to Hume scholar David Owen, also a professor of philosophy at the University of Arizona.
She was elected a Fellow of the American [Academy of Arts and Sciences] in 1992 and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2013. She is also a member of the Norwegian [Academy of Science and Letters].

Philosophical work

Julia Annas has advocated ethics based on character, building on ideas attributed to Greek philosopher Aristotle and making them relevant for contemporary moral discourse. She has argued that being virtuous involves "practical reasoning" which can be compared to the "exercising of a practical skill". Hence, she argues, rather than relating virtues to rules, principles, or an end goal, Annas says, first, people should ask how they can improve their moral "skills".

Selected publications

Books