Robert Adams

Clark Professor of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics 

Robert Adams, A.B. Princeton, M.A Oxford, B.D. Princeton, and Ph.D. Cornell, faculty member at Yale since 1993: You came to Yale as Chair of Philosophy in the early nineties to help rebuild Yale’s department of Philosophy, and you helped to do just that. You came as a distinguished philosopher, with many articles and a distinguished book of essays in philosophical theology to your credit, and with a rare combination of interests, areas of expertise, and influence: the philosophy of religion, moral philosophy, metaphysics and the history of modern philosophy. Your contributions to the philosophy of religion have helped make that field a respectable area of inquiry for the most rigorously-minded philosopher. Your work on moral philosophy demonstrated how far a religiously informed ethics, in touch with the oldest philosophical sources, can go in illuminating the moral status of humanity. While at Yale you published no less than three books, including your magisterial work, Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist, that has become the standard work on Leibniz in the field.

Known as a wonderful teacher and mentor, you have trained a generation of students who are now scattered throughout North America and whose interests and expertise have been indelibly shaped by you. For all of your scholarly accomplishments, as well as for your far-sighted and devoted leadership of the Philosophy Department, your colleagues on the Yale faculty gratefully thank you and wish you well as you retire and take up a new professorship at Oxford.