Simon Blackburn (born 1944) is a British academic philosopher known for his work in quasi-realism and his efforts to popularise philosophy. He retired as professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge in 2011, but remains a distinguished research professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, teaching every fall semester. He is also a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a member of the professoriate of New College of the Humanities. He was previously a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford and has also taught full-time at the University of North Carolina as an Edna J. Koury Professor. He is a former president of the Aristotelian Society, having served the 2009-2010 term.
In philosophy, he is best known as the proponent of quasi-realism in meta-ethics and as a defender of neo-Humean views on a variety of topics. He is a vice-president of the British Humanist Association and a former editor of the journal Mind. He makes occasional appearances in the British media, such as on BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze.
Blackburn was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007. He was one of 55 public figures to sign an open letter published in The Guardian in September 2010, stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI's state visit to the UK.
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“Wittgenstein imagined that the philosopher was like a therapist whose task was to put problems finally to rest, and to cure us of being bewitched by them. So we are told to stop, to shut off lines of inquiry, not to find things puzzling nor to seek explanations. This is intellectual suicide.”
—Simon Blackburn (b. 1944)
“Stevenson had noble ideas—as did the young Franklin for that matter. But Stevenson felt that the way to implement them was to present himself as a thoughtful idealist and wait for the world to flock to him. He considered it below him, or wrong, to scramble out among the people and ask them what they wanted. Roosevelt grappled voters to him. Stevenson shied off from them. Some thought him too pure to desire power, though he showed ambition when it mattered.”
—Garry Wills, U.S. historian. Certain Trumpets: The Call of Leaders, ch. 9, Simon & Schuster (1994)