Professor Knud Haakonssen FBA

History of moral, political & legal thought 1600-1800, especially natural law & rights; Enlightenment in Germany, Scandinavia & Scotland; scholarly editions of eighteenth century texts.

Elected 2012

Fellow type
UK Fellow
Year elected
2012

Knud Haakonssen was Professor of Philosophy at Boston University 1995-2005 and held the Chair of Intellectual History at the University of Sussex 2005-2012. He has also taught in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Denmark. In semi-retirement he is Professor of Intellectual History at the University of St. Andrews and a Fellow of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt. He holds doctorates from the Universities of Copenhagen and Edinburgh and he is a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. The main focus of his current work is the history of natural law and natural rights in the early-modern period. He co-directs a European project on this topic (https://www.uni-erfurt.de/projekte/natural-law-project/) and has published extensively in the field. Work on Enlightenment moral and political thought is ongoing, currently on Scottish, Danish and German material. A key feature of his work is the provision of critical editions of historical sources in intellectual history: http://www.euppublishing.com/series/EETR and http://www.libertyfund.org/search.aspx?dlCat=14

Current post

Professor of Intellectual History, University of St Andrews; Fellow, Max Weber Centre for Advanced Studies, University of Erfurt; Emeritus Professor of Intellectual History, University of Sussex

Past appointments

University of St Andrews Professor of Intellectual History

1970 -

University of Sussex Emeritus Professor of Intellectual History

1970 -

Other Foreign Institutions Fellow, Max Weber Centre for Advanced Studies, University of Erfurt

1970 -

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