Julia Annas

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Julia Elizabeth Annas (born 13 June 1946) is a British philosopher who has spent much of her career in the United States. She is Regents Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of Arizona. She earned a BA from Oxford in 1968 and an AM (1970) and PhD (1972) from Harvard. She spent 15 years as a Fellow and Tutor at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, before joining the University of Arizona in 1986 (with a one-year stint at Columbia University). Her research focuses on ancient Greek philosophy, especially ethics, psychology, and epistemology. She founded and edited the annual journal Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy. She is married to David Owen, a Hume scholar and professor at the University of Arizona. She has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1992), a member of the American Philosophical Society (2013), and a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Anna[s] advocates ethics based on character, drawing on ideas from Aristotle. She argues that being virtuous involves practical reasoning, like using a practical skill, and that we should focus on improving our moral skills rather than just following rules or aiming for a fixed end.