Rate My Professor Paul Taylor

Paul C. Taylor serves as the Presidential Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the Department of Philosophy. He completed his undergraduate training with a BA in philosophy from Morehouse College, followed by an MPA in public administration from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, and a PhD in philosophy from Rutgers University. Taylor's research focuses on aesthetics, the philosophy of race, American philosophy, and Africana philosophy. His scholarly contributions include authoring key books such as Black is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2016) and Race: A Philosophical Introduction (Cambridge, UK: Polity-Blackwell, 2023, third edition). He co-edited The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Race (New York: Routledge, 2017) with Linda Martín Alcoff and Luvell Anderson.

Taylor has published numerous articles and chapters, including “Survival is not a theory: Afro-Pessimism Transposed” in Black Aesthetics and Philosophy (forthcoming, edited by Michael Kelly and Monique Roelofs), “Understanding (Mis)understanding: Sally Be a Lamb” in Screen Stories and Moral Understanding (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023, edited by Carl Plantinga), “Contemporary Africana Philosophy” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2021 Edition), “Black Bodies, Black Panther” in African Somaesthetics: Cultures, Feminisms, Politics (Boston: Brill, 2020), “W. E. B. Du Bois: Afro-Modernism, Expressivism, and the Curse of Centrality” in African American Political Thought: A Collected History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021), “Black Lives Matter and the Ferguson Moment: Toward a Philosophy of Urban Relegation” in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the City (New York: Routledge, 2020), “Moral Perfectionism” in To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018), “Race in/and the Philosophy of Literature” in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Literature (New York: Routledge, 2016), and “Towards a Decolonial Analytic Philosophy: Institutional Corruption and Epistemic Culture” in Being at Home: Race, Institutional Culture, and Transformation at South African Higher Education Institutions (Durban: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2015). He teaches courses including Philosophy of Race and Racism, Philosophy of Film, Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Culture, Critical Race Aesthetics, Social and Political Philosophy, Africana Philosophy, and Philosophy of Sport. In 2024, Taylor was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Prior to UCLA, he held the position of Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.