Biography:Alice Crary

Short description: American philosopher

Alice Crary
Crary in 2017
Born	Alice Marguerite Crary 1967 (age 58–59) Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Education	Harvard University (BA) University of Pittsburgh (PhD)
Notable work	The Good it Promises, the Harm it Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism (2023) Animal Crisis (2022) Inside Ethics (2016) Beyond Moral Judgment (2007) The New Wittgenstein (2000)
Awards	Visiting Fellow, All Souls College, The University of Oxford (2021-22) Membership, Institute for Advanced Study School of Social Sciences (2017-18)
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Pittsburgh school Ordinary language philosophy
Doctoral advisor	John McDowell
Other academic advisors	Stanley Cavell, Hilary Putnam
Main interests	Moral philosophy, philosophy and literature, epistemology, feminist philosophy, feminist epistemology, conceptualism, animal ethics, disability studies, The Frankfurt School, objectivity
Notable ideas	Wider objectivity and rationality; critical animal theory; All human beings and animals are inside ethics
Website	www.alicecrary.com

Alice Crary (/ˈkrɛəri/; born 1967) is an American philosopher who currently holds the positions of university distinguished professor at the Graduate Faculty, The New School for Social Research in New York City and visiting fellow at Regent's Park College, University of Oxford, U.K. (where she was professor of philosophy 2018–19).

Early life and education

Alice Marguerite Crary was born in 1967 in Seattle, Washington. During high school, she was a national champion rower at the Lakeside School (Seattle) in Seattle, Washington, and competed internationally and placed 6th in the Junior Women's Eight at the 1985 World Rowing Junior Championships in Brandenburg, Germany.

Later in the 1980s, after studying liberation theology with Harvey Cox at Harvard Divinity School, Crary researched Christian base communities in southern Mexico and Guatemala.

In the early 1990s, she was a teacher at the Collegio Americano in Quito, Ecuador. Crary earned her PhD in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh in 1999.

Career

Crary is university distinguished professor at the Graduate Faculty of The New School for Social Research in New York City. She has held visiting fellowships at Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford (2018–19), All Souls College, Oxford (2021–22), and the Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Sciences (2017–18).

Crary frequently participates in and organizes events for public discussion, such as public debates on the valuation of life and the treatment of animals and the cognitively disabled. She has also written for the New York Times.

Ethics and moral philosophy

Crary's first monograph, Beyond Moral Judgment, discusses how literature and feminism help to reframe moral presuppositions. Her Inside Ethics argues that ethics in disability studies and animal studies is stunted by a lack of moral imagination, caused by a narrow understanding of rationality and by a philosophy severed from literature and art.

Feminism and epistemology

Crary's work on feminism is critical of standard views of objectivity in analytic philosophy and post-structuralism. Drawing on Wittgenstein and feminist theory, Crary rejects the view that objectivity is value-neutral, and thus incompatible with ethical and political perspectives. According to Crary, these "ethically-loaded perspectives" invite both cognitive and ethical appreciation for the lives of women, in ways that count as objective knowledge. Like her moral philosophy, her feminist conception of objectivity is informed by Wittgenstein, who she understands as proposing a "wide" view of objectivity: one in which affective responses are not merely non-cognitive persuasive manipulations but reveal real forms of suffering that give us a more objective understanding of the world.

Wittgenstein

Crary is associated with the so-called "therapeutic" or "resolute" reading of Wittgenstein. In her co-edited collection of essays of such readings, The New Wittgenstein, her own contribution argues against the standard use-theory readings of Wittgenstein that often render his thought as politically conservative and implausible. Since then, she has contributed to numerous collections of Wittgenstein scholarship, including Emotions and Understanding and interpretations of Wittgenstein's On Certainty.

Animals in ethics and politics

Crary has promoted (e.g., in her 2024 Cambridge Union opposition) the view that humans and animals have moral worth above and beyond any quantitative valuation.

Awards and honors

• John Harvard Scholarships, Fall 1987, Spring 1989, 1989–1990
• Phi Beta Kappa, Harvard College, 1990
• Bechtel Prize, Harvard University prize for the best undergraduate or graduate essay in philosophy (awarded for her honors thesis, “I Know I’m in Pain”), 1990
• Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities, University of Pittsburgh, 1991–1992
• University of Pittsburgh Teaching Fellowship, Fall 1992
• Alan Ross Anderson Fellowship (study of logic), University of Pittsburgh, Spring 1993
• Harvard University Certificate of Distinction in Teaching (Bok Center), 1993–1994
• University of Pittsburgh Teaching Fellowships, 1994–1997
• Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (study of ethical and religious values), University of Pittsburgh, 1997–1998
• Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellow, University Center for Human Values, Princeton University, 2003–2004
• Faculty Fellow, Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University, 2004–2005
• University Distinguished Teaching Award, The New School, New York (awarded annually to one member of the Graduate Faculty), 2005
• Convocation Speaker, The New School, New York, 2008
• American Philosophical Society Sabbatical Fellowship, 2009–2010 (declined)
• Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship for Experienced Researchers, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany, 2009–2010
• Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Grant for a Renewed Research Stay, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, 2014
• Fellow, Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, 2016–present
• Member, Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Sciences, Princeton, NJ, 2017–2018
• Honorary Guest Wittgenstein Professor, University of Innsbruck, Austria, Summer 2018
• Visiting fellow, Regent’s Park College, Oxford, 2020–present
• Visiting fellow, All Souls College, University of Oxford, 2021–2022

Selected works

Publications

• Tholoniat, Yann (2023). "Alice Crary & Lori Gruen. Animal Crisis. A New Critical Theory. Cambridge, Polity Press, 2022, 136 p.". Pratiques 199-200. doi:10.4000/pratiques.14253. ISSN 0338-2389. https://doi.org/10.4000/pratiques.14253. 
• Inside Ethics: On the Demands of Moral Thought, Harvard University Press, 2016-12-31, pp. i–vi, https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674089075-fm, retrieved 2025-10-19 
• "Moral Thought beyond Moral Judgment:", Beyond Moral Judgment (Harvard University Press): pp. 127–163, 2007, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1n1bsd0.8, retrieved 2025-10-19 
• Adams, Carol J.; Crary, Alice; Gruen, Lori, eds (2023-02-23). "The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does". Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780197655696.001.0001. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197655696.001.0001. 
• ((Read)), Rupert; Crary, Alice (2016-02-17). Wittgenstein among the Sciences. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-77023-6. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315546995. 

Monographs

• Crary, Alice; Gruen, Lori (2022). Animal crisis: a new critical theory. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-1-5095-4968-9. 
• Crary, Alice (2016). Inside ethics: on the demands of moral thought. Cambridge: Harvard university press. ISBN 978-0-674-96781-6. 
• Crary, Alice (2009). Beyond moral judgment. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0-674-03461-7. 

Edited volumes

• Adams, Carol J.; Crary, Alice; Gruen, Lori. The good it promises, the harm it does: critical essays on effective altruism. Oxford: Oxford University press. ISBN 978-0-19-765570-2. 
• Cavell, Stanley; Bauer, Nancy; Crary, Alice; Laugier, Sandra (2022). Here and there: sites of philosophy. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University press. ISBN 978-0-674-27048-0. 
• Diamond, Cora, ed (2010). Wittgenstein and the moral life: essays in honor of Cora Diamond. Representation and mind. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-27096-0. 
• Crary, Alice; Shieh, Sanford (2006-04-18) (in en). Reading Cavell. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-28004-9. https://books.google.com/books?id=5Wp_AgAAQBAJ&dq=reading+cavell&pg=PR1. 
• Crary, Alice; Read, Rupert J. (2000). The new Wittgenstein. London New York (N.Y.): Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-17318-6. 

See also

• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers
• List of female philosophers

External links

• New School for Social Research Homepage
• Institute for Advanced Study Homepage
• Template:World Rowing