Agnes Callard

Early life and education Callard was born on January 6, 1976, in Budapest, Hungary, She has a sister.

With L. A. Paul, Callard received the 2020 Lebowitz Prize, awarded by the American Philosophical Association and Phi Beta Kappa. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019. In 2017, she received the Quantrell Award.

Public writing and speaking

Callard has published in the Boston Review, The New Yorker, and The New York Times, and has written a column on public philosophy for The Point magazine. Podcasts that have hosted her include EconTalk, the Elucidations Podcast, and The Ezra Klein Show.

In 2017, she created the Night Owls public debate series in Hyde Park, Chicago, featuring guests such as Tyler Cowen, Chris Blattman, Ezra Klein, and Hollis Robbins, and in November 2018 participated in one with her ex-husband and colleague Ben Callard, on the philosophy of divorce.

She hosts the podcast Minds Almost Meeting together with the economist Robin Hanson.

Theory on aspiration Agnes Callard's longest book is Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming, which outlines and defends a theory about the process of changes in an individual's values, which she calls "aspiration". A summary of the book which was made by a fan and endorsed by the author divides the book into these core claims and various supporting claims (not reproduced here): Each numbered claim is supposed to be made by the corresponding numbered chapter in the book, with claim 0 made in the introduction section and claim 7 in the conclusion section. The reference to Sieyès was not made in Callard's book itself, but was made by the summary as a way to explain what the book refers to as "Strawson's Dilemma" (after Galen Strawson, who proposed it).

Note that "decision theory" in the book's context refers to a number of philosophical theories about decisions, not to the branch of probability known as decision theory.

Personal life In 2011, Callard divorced her husband, fellow University of Chicago professor Ben Callard, whom she had married in 2003.

Callard was diagnosed with autism in her 30s. On Anger was selected as one of The New Yorkers "Best Books We Read in 2020". Question Everything: A Stone Reader. Peter Catapano, Simon Critchley (2022). Liveright, New York. . Open Socrates (2025)

The New Yorker columns

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