Biography
Kim took two years of college in Seoul, South Korea as a French literature major, before transferring to Dartmouth College in 1955. Soon after, at Dartmouth, he changed to a combined major in French, mathematics, and philosophy and received a B.A. degree. After Dartmouth, he went to Princeton University, where he earned his Ph.D. in philosophy.
Kim is currently the William Herbert Perry Faunce Professor of Philosophy at Brown University (since 1987). He has also taught at Swarthmore College, Cornell University, the University of Notre Dame, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. From 1988–1989, he was president of the American Philosophical Association, Central Division. Since 1991, he has been a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. And, along with Ernest Sosa, he is a joint editor of the quarterly philosophical journal Noûs.
According to Kim, two of his major philosophical influences are Carl Hempel and Roderick Chisholm. Hempel, who sent him a letter encouraging him to go to Princeton, was a "formative influence". More specifically, Kim claims that he hopes he learned "a certain style of philosophy, one that emphasizes clarity, responsible argument, and aversion to studied obscurities and feigned profundities." From Chisholm he learned "not to fear metaphysics." This allowed him to go beyond the logical positivist approaches, that he had learned from Hempel, in his investigations in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind.
Read more about this topic: Jaegwon Kim
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