Judaic Studies Program at Syracuse University

Syracuse University

Laurence Thomas

Laurence Thomas is a Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at Syracuse University, his main interests being ethics and value theory, American slavery, and the Holocaust. Dr. Thomas teaches the course “Shoah: Reflections on the Holocaust.

Courses:

Shoah: Responding to the Holocaust

Teaching:

He has held appointments at Notre Dame, University of Maryland, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Oberlin College, and in 1994 was a visiting scholar in the Religion Department at the University of Michigan. He was Andrew Mellon Faculty Fellow at Harvard University in 1978-79, received an NEH award to conduct a seminar on "Competing Rights Claims" in the summer of 1981, and was a Fellow of the National Humanities Center in 1982-83. He has given the Lawrence Kohlberg Lecture at the Association of Moral Education (1993) and the fifth Meyer Warren Tenenbaum and Labelle Tenenbaum Lecture at the University of South Carolina.

Books:

Living Morally: A Psychology of Moral Character (Temple University Press, 1989),

Vessels of Evil (Temple University Press, 1993)

Sexual Rights and Human Orientation (Roman & Littlefield, 1999)

Children, Morality, and Political Theory, January 2005

Recent and Forthcoming Articles:

"Kant on Equality" (Forthcoming)

"Autonomy, Behavior, and Moral Goodness".

"Upside-Down Equality: A Response to Kantian Thought"

"Forgiving the Unforgivable"

"Autonomy, Behavior, and Moral Goodness"

Another one of Thomas's forthcoming essays is on living a meaningful life.