Patrick Frierson

Patrick R. Frierson is the Paul Pigott and William M. Allen Professor of Philosophy and Department Chair in Philosophy. He teaches courses in the history of philosophy, ethics (including environmental ethics), philosophy of religion, the philosophy of science, and other topics. He focuses primarily in the history of modern philosophy, roughly from Francis Bacon and Marie de Gournay through Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Salome, and Montessori, with special emphasis on Immanuel Kant, Maria Montessori, Adam Smith, Rene Descartes, and, recently, the history of Mexican philosophy.

His research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Spencer Foundation, among others. He is the author of dozens of articles and three books on Immanuel Kant as well as three books on Maria Montessori, as well as editor of Kant's “Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime.” Frierson is completing a fourth book on Montessori, has several projects on Kant and early modern European philosophy in the works, and is developing several projects in the history of Mexican philosophy.

Professor Frierson has three children and loves hiking, biking, and good conversation. He is often serving as squire for his horse-riding daughter or as sparring partner for his son who loves fencing and Dungeons and Dragons.

B.A., Williams College

M.A., Ph.D., University of Notre Dame.

Books

“Maria Montessori's Philosophy: Following the Child”
Oxford University Press, 2025

“The Moral Philosophy of Maria Montessori: Agency and the Structure of Ethical Life”
Bloomsbury Academic, 2022

“Intellectual Agency and Virtue Epistemology: A Montessori Perspective”
Bloomsbury, 2020

“Kant's Empirical Psychology”
Cambridge University Press, 2014

“Kant's Questions: What is the Human Being?”
Routledge, 2013

“Freedom and Anthropology in Kant's Moral Philosophy”
Cambridge University Press, 2003

“Kant: Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime and other Writings”
Edited with Paul Guyer, Cambridge University Press, 2011

Articles

“Montessori, Math, and Materials: A Case of Extended Cognition” (with Laura Di Paolo), Synthese, 2025

“Maria Montessori,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2025 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.)

“Montessori, Technology, and the Purpose of Education,” Montessori Life 35 (2023): 18-21

“What is the Idea of the Soul? Comments on Kant on Self-Knowledge and Self-Formation,” Kantian Review, 27 (2022), 475-481

“Discipline and the Cultivation of Autonomy in Immanuel Kant and Maria Montessori,” Journal of the Philosophy of Education 55 (2021): 1097-1111

“The Moral Philosophy of Maria Montessori,” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 7 (2021): 1-22

“Situationism and Intellectual Virtue: A Montessori Perspective,” Synthese 198 (2021): 4123-44

Book Chapters

“The Extraordinary Unity of Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment,” in Cambridge Critical Guide on the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming

“Descartes's Moral Theory,” in The Cartesian Mind, ed. C. Wee and J. Secada, Routledge, 2025

“A Metaphysical Basis for Love: Descartes and Spinoza on the Metaphysics of Love,” in Love: The History of a Concept (ed. R. Hanley) Oxford University Press, 2024

“Philosophy of Education,” in Oxford Handbook of Kant, ed. A. Stephenson and A. Gomes, Oxford University Press, 2024

“The Philosophy of Maria Montessori” in Bloomsbury Handbook of Montessori Research (ed. M. McKenna, E. Ahlquist, A. Murray, and M. Debs), Bloomsbury Academic, 2023

“Montessori,” in Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science (T. Shackelford and V. Weekes-Shackelford, eds.), Springer, 2018