Douglas B. Rasmussen

Education
BA, University of Iowa, 1971
PHD, Marquette University, 1980

Areas of Specialization
Ethics, Political Philosophy, Epistemology, and Ontology

Areas of Competence
Logic, Philosophy of Language, Business Ethics, and Political Economy

Publications

• The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand (University of Illinois Press, 1984) and Liberty for the Twenty-First Century (Roman & Littlefield, 1995), co-editor.
  
  
• The Catholic Bishops and the Economy: A Debate (Social Philosophy and Policy Center and Transaction Books, 1987), co-author.
  
  
• Liberty and Nature: An Aristotelian Defense of Liberal Order (Open Court, 1991), co-author.
  
  
• Liberalism Defended: The Challenge of Post-Modernity (Edward Elgar, 1997), co-author.
  
  
• The Monist, January 1992, on the topic Teleology and the Foundation of Value, guest editor.

Professional Journals

• "Aristotle and the Defense of the Law of Contradiction," The Personalist 54 (Spring 1973): 149-162.
  
  
• "Logical Possibility: An Aristotelian Essentialist Critique," The Thomist 47 (October 1983): 513-540.
  
  
• "Rorty, Wittgenstein, and the Nature of Intentionality," Proceedings of the ACPA 57(1983): 152-162.
  
  
• "Quine and Aristotelian Essentialism," The New Scholasticism 58 (Summer 1984): 316-335.
  
  
• "Liberalism and Natural End Ethics," American Philosophical Quarterly 27 (April 1990): 153-161.
  
  
• "Political Legitimacy and Discourse Ethics," International Philosophical Quarterly 32 (March 1992): 17-34.
  
  
• "The Significance for Cognitive Realism of the Thought of John Poinsot," ACPQ 68 (1994): 409-424.
  
  
• "Perfectionism," Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, Vol. III (Academic Press, 1997), pp. 473-480.
  
  
• "Human Flourishing and the Appeal to Human Nature," Social Philosophy & Policy 16 (Winter 1999): 1-43.
  
  
• "Why Individual Rights?" Individual Rights Reconsidered, ed. Tibor R. Machan (Hoover, 2001), pp. 113-136.

Professor Rasmussen has been a Bradley Scholar at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC. He has received research fellowships from the Center for Libertarian Studies, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Reason Foundation, and the Earhart Foundation. He also has been a recipient of a summer seminar fellowship from the National Endowment to the Humanities and has received numerous merit awards from St. John's University. Further, he was awarded a St. John's University medal for Outstanding Faculty Achievement in 1994.

Dr. Rasmussen is a member of the American Philosophical Association and has presented and commented on session papers. He also is a member of the American Catholic Philosophical Association and has twice received ('83 and '84) the Matchette Award for the outstanding paper by a younger scholar at the ACPA annual meeting. He is a member of the Metaphysical Society of America and the American Association for the Philosophic Study of Society. Furthermore, he has lectured throughout the United States and Europe, and he has participated in and directed many professional colloquia.

Dr. Rasmussen is one of the creators of the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program at SJU. He served as its initial program coordinator. He has also served on many departmental and university committees.

Currently, Professor Rasmussen is co-authoring a book in political philosophy. It is tentatively titled A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Moralistic Politics: Human Flourishing and the Right to Liberty.

rasmussd@stjohns.edu