Julia Driver

Julia Driver (born 1961) is an American philosopher and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, holding the Darrell K. Royal Chair in Ethics and American Society. She is a specialist in moral philosophy and is known for her work on virtue theory, particularly her consequentialist approach. Driver's consequentialist approach to virtue theory posits that virtues are character traits that systematically lead to good outcomes, and she argues that knowledge is not always necessary for virtue, and can sometimes even impede it. She received her BA from the University of Texas at Austin and her PhD from Johns Hopkins University, where her doctoral advisor was Susan R. Wolf. Before joining UT Austin in 2019, she taught at various institutions, including Washington University in St. Louis, Dartmouth College, Virginia Tech, and Brooklyn College. She is also a professorial fellow at the University of St Andrews. Driver has received prestigious fellowships, including a Laurance S. Rockefeller Fellowship from Princeton University, an NEH Fellowship, and an HLA Hart Fellowship at the University of Oxford. She has authored influential works such as "Uneasy Virtue" (2001), "Consequentialism", and "Ethics: The Fundamentals". She also served as co-editor of the journal "Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy" from 2018 to 2023.