Rate My Professor Paul Crittenden

Paul Crittenden is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy in the School of Humanities, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, at the University of Sydney. He previously held the position of Dean of the Faculty of Arts and contributed extensively to the Department of General Philosophy and the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry. Born in rural New South Wales in 1936, he was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1959 and resigned from clerical orders in 1983, thereafter focusing on his academic career in philosophy.

His research interests center on ethics, eschatology, philosophy of mind—including explorations of reason, will, emotion, and triune consciousness—moral development, Jean-Paul Sartre's ethics, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, ancient Greek philosophy from Homer to Plato and Aristotle, and political philosophy. Crittenden has authored several influential books, including Learning to be Moral: Philosophical Thoughts about Moral Development (1990), Sartre in Search of an Ethics (2018), Reason, Will and Emotion: Defending the Greek Tradition against Triune Consciousness (2012), and Life Hereafter: The Rise and Decline of a Tradition (2021). Notable chapters include "Thomas Aquinas: Body and Soul" (2021), "Last Things" (2020), "Eschatology Now: The Catholic Case" (2020), "From Sheol to the Resurrection of the Dead" (2020), "God, Creation, and the Biblical Moral Order" (2020), "Salvation or Damnation: From Paul to Augustine" (2020), "Eschatology: From Dante to the Secular Age" (2020), and "Greek Themes: From Homer to Plato and Aristotle" (2020). His articles cover topics such as Sartre's absent God (2012), Nietzsche's middle period (2010), and reviews of philosophical biographies. Crittenden serves as vice-president of the Sydney University Arts Association and the Sydney Society of Literature and Aesthetics, contributing to editorial boards and sustaining his impact on philosophical discourse bridging ethics, theology, and moral theory.