At present I enjoy the good fortune of holding the Henry E. Allison Endowed Chair in the very fine Department of Philosophy at the University of California San Diego. Before coming to sunny San Diego, I held an endowed chair at the University of Notre Dame and before that I spent a good chunk of my career at the University of Oxford, where I was Professor of Classical Philosophy and a happy Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, where I continue to hold an Honorary Research Fellowship.
Much of my research explores themes in Aristotelian philosophy, including metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and axiology. I am especially interested in how ideas developed in antiquity continue to shape contemporary philosophical discussion, and the ways in which they can—and cannot—continue to inform our thinking about core issues in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, ethical theory, and the nature and normativity of life and living systems. My aim, both in writing and in teaching, is to approach these topics with such clarity and precision as I can muster, ever guided by a simple question, without which neither critical evaluation nor even exposition is possible: should I believe this? This is, I think, an indispensable if egocentric way of asking the question which leads us into philosophy and then holds us held there once we have arrived: is this true?
Beyond commanding my interest in this way, philosophy has been extraordinarily kind to me. Over the course of my career, I have had the opportunity to teach and lecture internationally, including in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, New Zealand, and China. In addition to my primary posts in Boulder, Oxford, South Bend, and San Diego, I have held visiting positions at Cornell, Stanford, Yale, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Canterbury (Christchurch, New Zealand), St. Louis University, and, most recently, at the Center for Advanced Studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich. Engaging with colleagues, students and learned audiences across these different institutions and cultures has been a deeply rewarding part of my life, continually reinforcing my view that philosophy is not only an academic discipline, but a shared and evolving human conversation.
At the heart of what I do is a simple conviction: philosophy matters. It matters not only as a field of study, but as a way of thinking—one that helps us better understand ourselves, our choices, and the world we inhabit.
Outside of philosophy, I am a lifelong reader of fiction and poetry, with a special fondness, on the fiction side, for George Eliot, and on the poetry side, for John Milton. I also have a notable weakness for Anthony Trollope, which makes some of my betters cringe, I know, but surely we may learn with enjoyment, too, by casting our gazes slowly and minutely on the eternal ordinary.
Beyond the printed word, I gravitate towards music, opera above all, traveling as often as time and money permit to the world's leading opera houses and festivals for the doses of beauty they dispense, including that sometimes neglected form of beauty, arduous beauty, which demands before it awakens.
The arduous kind is worth chasing, to be sure, but easy beauty is there for us, too. I find some of mine in the rose garden (though, well, there are those thorns. . .), most notably the Inez Grant Parker Rose Garden in San Diego's Balboa Park, where it is my privilege to serve as a member of the mighty, mighty Balboa Park Rose Corps.
Finally: how blessed can I be? I've two magnificent children, Colin Sullivan Shields and Cora Sullivan Shields, and a wife of piercing intelligence and surpassing grace, the philosopher Amanda Ruth Greene Shields.
I can say only: thank you.
For a reasonably full version of the story I tell myself about my intellectual development, I offer this interview, conducted by the capable Richard Marshall, in 3:16 AM, 'Aristotle, Metaphysics, and the Delicacy of Anachronism.'