Agnes Callard

Agnes Callard (née Gellen; born 1976) is a Hungarian-American philosopher and an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. Her primary areas of specialization are ancient philosophy and ethics. She is also noted for her popular writings and work on public philosophy. Callard was born on January 6, 1976, in Budapest, Hungary, to a Jewish family. Her mother, Judit Gellen, was a hematologist and oncologist, and her father studied law in Hungary before becoming a carpet salesman in the US. Both sets of her grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Callard was raised in Budapest until age five, then moved with her parents to Rome before settling in the New York metropolitan area. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Chicago, majoring in Fundamentals. She subsequently earned a Master of Arts degree in classics from the University of California, Berkeley, and later completed her PhD in philosophy there. Callard has been a faculty member at the University of Chicago since 2008, becoming an associate professor of philosophy in 2017. With L. A. Paul, Callard received the 2020 Lebowitz Prize. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019 and the Quantrell Award in 2017. Callard has published in the Boston Review, The New Yorker, and The New York Times, and has written a column on public philosophy for The Point magazine. Podcasts that have hosted her include EconTalk, the Elucidations Podcast, and The Ezra Klein Show. In 2017, she created the Night Owls public debate series in Hyde Park, Chicago. She hosts the podcast Minds Almost Meeting together with the economist Robin Hanson. Her book Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming outlines a theory about the process of changes in an individual's values, which she calls "aspiration." In 2011, Callard divorced her husband, Ben Callard, with whom she has two children. She later married Arnold Brooks, with whom she has one child. She resides with both her current husband and her ex-husband. Callard was diagnosed with autism in her 30s.