Richard Baron

Who is Richard Baron?

Richard Baron is a philosopher living in London. He was educated at Aylesbury Grammar School and at Selwyn College, Cambridge.

His first book, Projects and Values, argues for a foundationalist virtue ethic, against the background of a structured approach to the cultural relativity of value-concepts and a conception of the human subject that is inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein.

His second book, Deliberation and Reason, analyses our processes of deliberation. He argues that we have to see ourselves as enjoying a freedom that is incompatible with determinism, in order to support our self-conception as self-directed subjects. He then argues that we can see ourselves as having that kind of freedom if we overlook the causal closure of the physical, and that this vision of ourselves can sit alongside the scientific account of ourselves.

He has published articles in Philosophy Now and in Ethical Record.

He has also had a career as an adviser on tax policy, both for the British Government and for the Institute of Directors.