Annette Baier 1929 – 2012
Annette Claire Baier was a New Zealand-born moral philosopher and one of the most distinctive analytic voices in late twentieth-century ethics. After studies at Otago and Oxford she taught at Carnegie Mellon and for two decades at the University of Pittsburgh. Her essays, collected in Postures of the Mind, A Progress of Sentiments, and Moral Prejudices, brought trust, second-person address, and the reading of Hume back to the center of moral philosophy. She defended a Humean ethics of sentiments at a time when Kantian and utilitarian frameworks dominated the field, and was a major figure in the recovery of women's voices in the philosophical tradition.
Key facts
- Nationality
- New Zealander
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Analytic
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Annette Baier:
“Trust is more like the air we breathe than a thing we choose.”
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Attributed to Annette Baier:
“The ethics of trust is more fundamental than the ethics of justice.”
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Attributed to Annette Baier:
“Hume is the moral philosopher of women's experience.”
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Attributed to Annette Baier:
“We can only learn what trust is by being entrusted, and by trusting in turn.”
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Attributed to Annette Baier:
“Moral life is mostly carried on in the second person.”