Mark Murphy
Faculty Affiliate, Cathy and Jack Brennan Professor of Virtue Ethics
Biography
Mark C. Murphy is the Cathy and Jack Brennan Chair of Virtue Ethics at the University of Notre Dame. He previously taught at Georgetown University (1995-2026) and the University of Hawaii at Manoa (1993-1995). He received his Ph.D. from Notre Dame in 1993.
Murphy works in ethics, philosophy of law, and philosophy of religion. In ethics and philosophy of law, he is primarily concerned to work out and defend positions broadly within the natural law tradition. In ethics and philosophy of religion, he is interested in thinking through questions about theistic explanation of moral norms and about the distinctive norms of action by which God acts. He is the author of seven books and is past editor of the journal Faith and Philosophy.
Along with Christian Miller (Wake Forest) and Chris Tucker (William and Mary), Murphy is co-organizer of the annual Theistic Ethics Workshop, which rotates among their three home campuses.
Research Interests
Ethics, philosophy of law, philosophy of religion
Representative Publications
Natural Law and Practical Rationality (Cambridge, 2001)
An Essay on Divine Authority (Cornell, 2002)
Natural Law in Jurisprudence and Politics (Cambridge, 2006)
Philosophy of Law: The Fundamentals (Blackwell, 2006)
God and Moral Law: On the Theistic Explanation of Morality (Oxford, 2011)
God's Own Ethics: Norms of Divine Action and the Argument from Evil (Oxford, 2017)
Divine Holiness and Divine Action (Oxford, 2021)
Education
BA University of Texas at Austin (1988)
Ph.D. University of Notre Dame (1993)