David Schmidtz

Dr. David Schmidtz is Professor and Presidential Chair of Moral Science at West Virginia University’s Chambers College of Business & Economics, Distinguished Affiliated Fellow with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and Editor-in-Chief of Social Philosophy & Policy, which is by circulation the field's leading journal. 

Before becoming a professor at West Virginia University, Schmidtz was the Kendrick Professor of Philosophy and Eller Chair of Service-Dominant Logic at the University of Arizona. While there, he founded and served as Head of the Department of Political Economy and Moral Science. 

Schmidtz holds a PhD in philosophy and an MA in economics from the University of Arizona. He is known for his work on moral theory and has written on diverse topics such as the limits of government, individual responsibility and moral theory, and the elements of justice. He has also written articles of particular interest to the legal academy on the institution of property, environmental ethics, and rational choice.

He has published numerous books, including Living Together: Inventing Moral Science (Oxford University Press, 2023), A Brief History of Liberty (Wiley Blackwell, 2011) coauthored with Jason Brennan, and Elements of Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2005). He is the editor of Robert Nozick (Cambridge University Press 2002), a collection of essays on the libertarian philosopher, and his leading textbook Environmental Ethics What Really Matters, What Really Works (Oxford University Press, 2024) co-edited with Dan Shahar is now in its fourth edition.