Robert C. Solomon
Robert C. Solomon (b. 1942) is a noted professor and scholar of continental philosophy. He is currently the Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Philosophy and Business and a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers at University of Texas at Austin, where he has been since 1972.
Solomon was born in Detroit, Michigan. His father was a lawyer, and his mother an artist. After earning a B.A. (1963) at the University of Pennsylvania, he moved to the University of Michigan for an M.A. (1965) and Ph.D. (1967). He has held several teaching positions at such schools as Princeton University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Pittsburgh.
He specializes in 19th-century German philosophy, Nietzsche, Sartre, phenomenology; ethics, and the philosophy of emotions.
Solomon has published more than 40 books on philosophy, and is also a published songwriter. He made a cameo appearance in Richard Linklater's film Waking Life (2001), where he discusses the continuing relevance of existentialism in a postmodern world.
Selected publications
- Existentialism (McGraw-Hill, 1974)
- The Passions (Doubleday, 1976)
- In the Spirit of Hegel (Oxford, 1983)
- From Hegel to Existentialism (Oxford, 1987)
- Continental Philosophy Since 1750 (Oxford, 1988)
- About Love: Reinventing Romance for Our Times (Simon & Schuster, 1988)
- The Philosophy of {Erotic} Love, with Kathleen M. Higgins (University Press of Kansas, 1991)
- Ethics and Excellence (Oxford, 1992)
- The Joy of Philosophy (Oxford, 1999)
- (co-authored) What Nietzsche Really Said (Random House/Schocken, 2000)
- Spirituality for the Skeptic: The Thoughtful Love of Life (Oxford, 2002)
- The Big Question: A Short Introduction to Philosophy (Harcourt Bruce Collede Publishers, 2002)
- Not Passion's Slave: Emotions and Choice (Oxford, 2003)
- What Is An Emotion?: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Oxford, 2003)
- Living with Nietzsche (Oxford, 2003)
- Thinking about Feeling: Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions (Oxford, 2004)