Murphy-Philosophy Seminar: Dustin Sebell

Organized by the Tulane Philosophy Department, the Murphy-Philosophy Seminars are a series of talks where Center for Ethics Faculty Fellows and distinguished guest speakers present works in progress on ethics, political philosophy, political theory, moral psychology, the philosophy of law, and intellectual history. These seminars are designed primarily as a philosophy colloquia for faculty, fellows, and graduate students. Papers are distributed one week beforehand to the participants who read the paper and prepare discussion questions for the presenter.

Dustin Sebell is Associate Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University, where he studies and teaches the history of political philosophy. He is Director of the LeFrak Forum and the Symposium on Science, Reason, and Modern Democracy, as well as Senior Research Fellow at the U.S. Naval Academy’s Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership. He was the Class of 1962 Resident Fellow at the U.S. Naval Academy’s Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership from 2022-23, and Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Government at Harvard University from 2014-15. 

His first book, The Socratic Turn: Knowledge of Good and Evil in an Age of Science, was published in 2016 by the University of Pennsylvania Press, and won the Delba Winthrop Award for Excellence in Political Science. His second book, Xenophon’s Socratic Education: Reason, Religion, and the Limits of Politics, was published in 2021, also by the University of Pennsylvania Press. His writing on ancient and modern political philosophy has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, the Political Science Reviewer, and the Review of Politics.