SASHA MUDD
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Mudd received her PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge, after earning a Master’s in Divinity from the University of Chicago. She spent seven years as a Permanent Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Southampton before moving with her family to Chile in 2017. She is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Pontificia Universidad Católica in 2019.
Her published research covers various aspects of Kant’s philosophy, with a particular emphasis on the relationship of practical to theoretical reason, Kant's so called 'unity of reason' thesis, and Kant's attempts to ground fundamental normative conclusions in his account of agency. Mudd’s current research explores Kantian approaches to contemporary topics in applied ethics: including the dangers posed by AI, problems of intergenerational justice on a warming planet, and the virtues on which liberal democracies depend.
Her wider research interests include the philosophy of grief, death, and dying, feminism, as well as select topics at the intersection of science and politics. She has published in the European Journal of Philosophy and Kantian Review, among other top-ranking journals, while her writings for a popular audience have appeared in The New York Times, among other outlets. She is currently the Philosopher-at-Large for Prospect Magazine, where she writes a monthly column.
More About Me
I believe that in an age of noise, slowing down to think can be an act of resistance — and even hope.
I return to old sources of wisdom not to escape our moment, but to face it more deeply. At the same time, I write from a global vantage point: as a Californian who has lived abroad for more than two decades — in the UK, Brazil, Argentina, and now Chile — I’m drawn to the patterns that connect distant places, and to the ways thought stretches across borders as well as centuries.
My path to philosophy began in loss. When I was twelve, my father died, and I turned to books to make sense of things that didn’t make sense at all. I studied Divinity first, before turning to Kant and the Enlightenment in search of freedom’s foundations. Along the way, I came to realize that philosophy isn’t primarily about finding answers, but instead about asking better questions, thinking in conversation with the best minds across the centuries, and learning to live (as gracefully as one can) with uncertainty in the face of life’s glorious, painful complexity.
My academic work focuses on Kant, freedom, and the moral imagination — but my writing wanders further afield: into grief, love, technology, democracy, and the everyday art of being human.
Between hemispheres and languages, I’ve come to live my life in both English and Spanish, which leads to daily frustration, major and minor confusion, and also — I hope —- a wider way of seeing the world. I’ve learned to live with homesickness as one learns to live with weather: you just adapt, and sometimes it gives you the most beautiful light.
