Our People

Prof. John Haldane

KHS PhD FRSE FRSA HonDLitt

Vice-Chair

John Haldane is the J. Newton Rayzor Sr Distinguished Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at Baylor University, and Professor of Philosophy, Senior Fellow, and Co-Director at the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs in the Department of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews.

He is a Consultor to the Pontifical Council for Culture and a Member of the Pontifical Academy for Life and of the Pontifical Academy for Thomas Aquinas, as well as Chairman of the Royal Institute of Philosophy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (since 1995). He is also a visiting professor in the Jubilee Center for Character and Virtues at Birmingham University. He has held the Royden Davis Chair in Humanities at Georgetown University, Washington DC; and been Stanton Lecturer in Cambridge University, Gifford Lecturer in Aberdeen University, Joseph Lecturer at the Gregorian University, Rome, and MacDonald Lecturer in Oxford University.

He has also held fellowships at the universities of Edinburgh, Oxford, Pittsburgh and Notre Dame, and is an ongoing Senior Fellow of the Center for Ethics and Culture at Notre Dame, and Senior Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton.

Among many other books, Professor Haldane has written Reasonable Faith (Routledge, 2010), and edited “Analytical Thomism” (The Monist Vol. 80, no. 4, October 1997), Mind, Metaphysics and Value in the Thomistic and Analytical Traditions (Notre Dame, 2002), and Modern Writings on Thomism (Bristol: Thoemmes/Continuum, 2003).

His many articles and chapters include “Analytical Philosophy and the Future of Thomism” (Cogito 13 (1999)); “A Thomist Metaphysics” in R. Gale (ed.) Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); “Contemporary Philosophy of Mind and the Need of Thomism” (Iride, 17 (2004)); “Analytical Thomism: how we got here, why it’s worth remaining, and where we may go to next” in C. Paterson & M. Pugh (eds.) Analytical Thomism: Traditions in Dialogue (London: Ashgate, 2006); “Kenny and Aquinas on the Metaphysics of Mind” in J. Cottingham & P. Hacker (eds.) Mind, Method, and Morality (Oxford: OUP, 2010); “Is the Soul the Form of the Body?” (American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 87 (2013)).

Sincerest Thanks for Your Support

Staff are grateful to all those who sustained the Centre in the past by their prayers and the generous financial support from trusts, organisations, communities and especially from individual donors, including the core funding that came through the Day for Life fund and so from the generosity of many thousands of parishioners. We would finally like to acknowledge the support the Centre has received from the Catholic community in Ireland, especially during the pandemic when second collections were not possible.

We would like to emphasise that, though the Centre is now closed, these donations have not been wasted but have helped educate and support generations of conscientious healthcare professionals, clerics, and lay people over almost 50 years. This support has also helped prevent repeated attempts to legalise euthanasia or assisted suicide in Britain and Ireland from 1993 till the end of the Centre’s work on 31 July 2025.