Louis P. Pojman

Louis P. Pojman was born on 22 April 1935. His education encompassed both theology and philosophy: he studied at Union Theological Seminary under Reinhold Niebuhr and later studied analytic philosophy at the University of Oxford, where he wrote a dissertation on the relationship between faith and reason in the thought of Søren Kierkegaard.

Pojman taught at universities including Notre Dame, the University of Texas at Dallas, and the University of Mississippi. From 1995, he was Professor of Philosophy at the United States Military Academy at West Point. During his academic career, he also served as a visiting professor or scholar at a number of other universities and academic centers.

Pojman’s work ranged across moral philosophy, applied ethics, philosophy of religion, epistemology, and social and political philosophy. His best-known books include Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, The Logic of Subjectivity: Kierkegaard's Philosophy of Religion, Religious Belief and the Will, Global Environmental Ethics, Life and Death, and Philosophy of Religion. He also edited numerous collections and textbooks intended for the teaching of philosophical and ethical issues.

A significant part of Pojman’s work was devoted to fundamental moral questions and the application of ethical theories to real-world issues. He wrote on relativism and moral objectivity, justice, punishment, abortion, life and death, and environmental ethics, seeking to formulate and assess competing arguments in a clear form suited to philosophical discussion. This connection between philosophical research and university education was a distinctive feature of his work.

Pojman was the author or editor of more than thirty books and the author of more than one hundred articles. He died on 15 October 2005, and his educational and scholarly works continue to be used in discussions of moral philosophy, applied ethics, and philosophy of religion.