Discover the Best Books Written by Peter Adamson

Peter Scott Adamson (born August 10, 1972) is an American philosopher and intellectual historian. He holds two academic positions: professor of philosophy in late antiquity and in the Islamic world at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich; and professor of ancient and medieval philosophy at King's College London. Adamson hosts the weekly podcast History of Philosophy without any gaps, surpassing 25 million downloads in 2019. 

It attempts to make accessible the global history of philosophies in all cultures. It has covered Greek philosophy, Islamic philosophy, and European philosophy up to the early modern era and also launched a series on Indian philosophy (with co-author Jonardon Ganeri), Africana philosophy (with co-author Chike Jeffers), and Chinese philosophy (planned, with co-author Karyn Lai). Next to his other academic publications, Adamson has turned the podcast into an eponymous book series.

He received the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2003 for "outstanding research achievements of young scholars of distinction and promise based in UK institutions" and a subsequent grant in 2010. In 2020, he received the Schelling Prize from the Bavarian Academy of Sciences for his work on multiculturalism from a historical perspective. His latest book is Don't Think for Yourself. Authority and Belief in Medieval Philosophy (2022).

Adamson received his bachelor's degree from Williams College summa cum laude in 1994 and his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in 2000. He has worked at King's College London since 2000, becoming a professor of ancient and medieval philosophy there in 2009. In 2012, he obtained a joint appointment as a professor of late ancient and Arabic philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

Adamson lives in Munich with his wife (who is Bavarian) and children. He is fluent in English and German and can also work with texts in Ancient Greek, Arabic, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and, more recently, Persian. He advocates respecting religion as inseparable from philosophy, seeing religious thought as "philosophically fascinating and fruitful." In a 2019 interview, Adamson stated: "If I could live ten times, I’d like to spend nine of those lives specializing in different areas of the history of philosophy."