Lenn Goodman
Professor of Philosophy
Professor of Religious Studies

A.B. (Harvard 1965)
D.Phil. (Oxford 1968)

lgoodman@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu

Curriculum Vitae (PDF)

Professor Goodman's philosophical interests center on metaphysics and ethics, and he has paid special attention over they years to Islamic and Jewish philosophical thought and their creative interactions. His books include: Jewish and Islamic Philosophy: Crosspollinations in the Classic Age (Edinburgh Univiersity Press and Rutgers University Press, 1999), Judaism, Human Rights and Human Values (Oxford University Press, 1998), God of Abraham (Oxford University Press, 1996--winner of the Gratz Centennial Prize, 1997), Avicenna (Routledge, 1992), On Justice (Yale University Press, 1991), and translations with commentary of such Arabic classics as: Saadiah's Book of Theodicy (commentary on the book of Job, Yale University Press, 1988), The Case of the Animals Before the King of the Jinn (Twayne, 1978), The Philosophical Writings of Maimonides (Viking, 1976), and Ibn Tufayl's Hayy Ibn Yaqzan (Twayne, 1976).

He has written philosophical essays on most of the major figures of Islamic and Jewish philosophy and on a variety of topics in political philosophy, biophilosophy, and the theory of knowledge and culture. He serves on the editorial boards of Philosophy East and West and Asian Philosophy, and has served on the board of History of Philosophy Quarterly and as Vice President and Program Chair of the Institute for Islamic/Judaic Studies. He was Jewish Philosophy subject editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, is a fellow of the Academy for Jewish Philosophy, and he edits the Brown Judaic Studies series Medieval Approaches to Judaism. Professor Goodman has also contributed to the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, the Blackwell's Companion to the Philosophy of Religion, the Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy, as well as other works of reference. His most recently completed book is In Defense of Truth: A Pluralist Approach, to be published by Humanity Press. Professor Goodman is currently hard at work on two more works: Humanism in Islam for Oxford University Press, and God and Evolution for Routledge Publishing.