Katana VentraIP

Frances Kamm

Frances Myrna Kamm (/kæm/) is an American philosopher specializing in normative and applied ethics. Kamm is currently the Henry Rutgers University Professor of Philosophy and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.[1] She is also the Littauer Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy Emerita at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, as well as Professor Emerita in the Department of Philosophy at New York University.

Frances M. Kamm

Barnard College (BA)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD)

Contemporary philosophy

Western Philosophy

Analytic philosophy

Rutgers University
Harvard University
New York University

Ethics, bioethics, philosophy of law, political philosophy, Kantianism

Biography[edit]

Kamm studied at Barnard College, receiving her B.A. in 1969. She completed her doctorate in 1980 at the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, where she was supervised by Barbara Herman.[2] She was on the faculty of New York University during the 1980s to 1990s and received a professorship at Harvard in 2003, prior to her move to Rutgers.


Known for her use, and defence, of philosophical thought experiments and moral intuitions, Frances Kamm is a major figure in contemporary non-consequentialist ethics. Kamm's work spans across many issues in bioethics, normative ethics, and the philosophy of death, including: the moral justification of abortion, the ethics of war, physician-assisted suicide, the trolley problem and the doctrine of the double effect.[3][4]


Kamm has worked as an ethics consultant for the World Health Organization.[5] [6] She is a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution in Garrison, New York.[7] She held ACLS, AAUW, and Guggenheim fellowships, and has been a Fellow of the Program in Ethics and the Professions at the Kennedy School, the Center for Human Values at Princeton, and the Center for Advanced Study at Stanford. She is a member of the editorial boards of Philosophy & Public Affairs, Legal Theory, Bioethics, and Utilitas.


In August 2007, Kamm delivered the annual Oslo Lecture in Moral Philosophy. In 2008, she delivered the Uehiro Lectures at Oxford University in England. In 2011, Kamm was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as an ethics consultant. In 2013, she delivered the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at the University of California, Berkeley.[8]

(1992). Creation and Abortion: a study in moral and legal philosophy, Oxford University Press

(1994). Morality, Mortality Volume I: Death and Whom to Save from It, Oxford University Press

(1994). Morality, Mortality Volume II: Rights, Duties, and Status, Oxford University Press

(2007). Intricate Ethics: rights, responsibilities, and permissible harm, Oxford University Press

(2011). Ethics of Enemies: terror, torture, and war, Oxford University Press

(2012). The Moral Target: Aiming at Right Conduct in War and Other Conflicts, Oxford University Press

(2013). Bioethical Prescriptions: To Create, End, Choose, and Improve Lives, Oxford University

(2015). The Trolley Problem Mysteries, Oxford University Press

(2020). Almost Over: Aging, Dying, Dead, Oxford University Press

(2022). Rights and their limits: in theory, cases, and pandemics, Oxford University Press

Kamm has published a number of monographs:


Kamm has published a numbers papers in journals (including Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy & Public Affairs, Ethics, and Philosophical Studies), alongside contributing a number of chapters to edited volumes. A selection of her work can be found below:

American philosophy

Trolley problem

Philosophical aspects of the abortion debate

Just war theory

Unger, Peter, Living High and Letting Die Oxford University Press, 1996. (Unger argues that the intuitions [considered case judgments] on which Kamm relies in her work are, in fact, unreliable. Kamm responds in Intricate Ethics.)

Kahneman, Daniel, 'Can We Trust Our Intuitions?' in Alex Voorhoeve Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-19-921537-9 (Kahneman argues that Kamm's case-based method does not give us access to the reasons we have for making intuitive judgments.)

Conversations on Ethics.

In Alex Voorhoeve, Conversations on Ethics. Oxford University Press, 2009. 978-0-19-921537-9

'In Search of the Deep Structure of Morality.' (A conversation with Frances Kamm)

(accessed 25 September 2007).

Frances Kamm, Faculty of Arts and Sciences faculty page

(accessed 5 December 2007)

Frances Kamm, John F. Kennedy School of Government faculty page

(accessed 10 November 2008)

The Harvard Crimson: Harvard Nabs NYU Philosopher

(accessed 29 September 2008)

Brian Leiter's Summary of Philosophy Faculty Moves and Hirings, 2002-2003