Sharon Lloyd

Sharon A. Lloyd (born 1958) is Professor of Philosophy, Law, and Political Science at the University of Southern California. She co-founded the USC Center for Law and Philosophy, and directs the USC Levan Institute's Conversations in Practical Ethics Program. Lloyd's work, especially on the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, has been considered some of the most significant work published in recent years.

Education and career

Lloyd graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1981 where she studied with Philippa Foot and Rogers Albritton, and earned her PhD in philosophy from Harvard University in 1987, where she wrote her dissertation under John Rawls and T.M. Scanlon.

Her first book, Ideals as Interests in Hobbes's Leviathan: The Power of Mind over Matter, defends the controversial thesis that Hobbes was concerned with transcendent interests – interests that override the fear of death – not, as it is usually assumed, with the desire for self-preservation. Lloyd's second book, Morality in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes: Cases in the Law of Nature, was described by A.P. Martinich, writing in the Journal of the History of Philosophy, as one of the most significant books about Hobbes published in the last twenty five years.