Iain Thomson

Iain Donald Thomson (born 1968) is an American philosopher and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico (UNM). He is a well-known expert on Martin Heidegger.

Education and career Thomson studied as an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked with Hubert Dreyfus, and then earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. As a visiting graduate student at UC Irvine, he also studied with Jacques Derrida. He is known for his expertise on Heidegger's philosophy, European philosophy since Kant, philosophy of education, philosophy of technology, philosophy of art, philosophy of literature and environmental philosophy.

Thomson received a National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship and UNM College of Arts and Sciences' Gunter Starkey Teaching Award in 2003. He is featured in Tao Ruspoli's film Being in the World. His articles on Heidegger have been published in such journals as Inquiry, Journal of the History of Philosophy, The Harvard Review of Philosophy, the International Journal of Philosophical Studies, and the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology.

Family Thomson's father is psychiatrist Captane "Cap" Thomson, beloved "Doctoring 3" preceptor at UC Davis Medical School.

His younger brother is Mungo Thomson, a contemporary visual artist based in Los Angeles.

Books Heidegger on Technology's Danger and Promise in the Age of AI, Cambridge University Press, 2025, Rethinking Death in and after Heidegger, Cambridge University Press, 2024, The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945–2015, edited by Kelly Becker and Iain D. Thomson, Cambridge University Press, 2019, Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity, Cambridge University Press, 2011, Heidegger on Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of Education, Cambridge University Press, 2005,