William Sweet

William Sweet is a Canadian philosopher, and a Past-President of the Canadian Philosophical Association. He is currently Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Philosophy, Theology, and Cultural Traditions at St Francis Xavier University. Sweet is also a member of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies at the University of Ottawa, and serves as an adjunct professor in the graduate programmes of Saint Paul University and of the Collège dominicain de philosophie et de théologie in Ottawa, Canada. Sweet was Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Religious Studies at St Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where he served as the Vice President (Academic) from 2007 to 2008. He has also been a Visiting Professor at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland, Soochow University, Taipei, and the Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram and the University of Pune, India.

Sweet studied political science, theology, and philosophy in Canada, France, and Germany. He completed a DEA in political science at the Sorbonne at the Université de Paris (with Luc Ferry), a PhD in philosophy at the University of Ottawa, and a D.Ph. at the Université Saint-Paul. He also studied at Carleton University, the University of Manitoba, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and the Centre Sèvres, (Faculté de Théologie de la Compagnie de Jésus, Paris).

Sweet specializes in political philosophy (particularly on issues of human rights); the philosophy of religion (e.g., the influence of science and technology on religion and, broadly, epistemology of religion); the relation of culture and tradition to philosophical thinking (particularly, comparative Asian and Western philosophy); late 19th and early 20th century Anglo-American Philosophy (particularly, the origins of analytic philosophy and British Idealism); ethical theories and applied ethics (especially, cross-cultural ethics); and the philosophy of Jacques Maritain.