March-May 2018
Home Institution: Saint Vincent College
Project: Hume’s Essays: Beyond Progress and Decline
Margaret Watkins is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Honors Program at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. During her time in Edinburgh, she will finish work on her study of Hume’s Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame and has published articles on Hume’s ethics and aesthetics in journals such as Hume Studies, Inquiry, and History of Philosophy Quarterly. She also likes to think about other early modern writers and thinkers with interesting affinities to Hume, and she has published articles on the resources of Jane Austen’s novels for ethical theory and the concept of habit in Montaigne’s Essays. Her plans for future research include further study of Hume’s theory of the passions as it relates to marginalized groups, including those with emotional disorders. She is a member of the Hume Society Executive Committee and is co-organizer of the 2018 Hume Society conference in Budapest.