Thomas A. McCarthy

Thomas A. McCarthy (born 1940) is an American philosopher and the John Shaffer Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Northwestern University. He previously taught at LMU Munich for four years and Boston University for thirteen years. After retiring from Northwestern in 2006, he served as the William H. Orrick Visiting Professor at Yale University for three years. McCarthy's academic career was supported by numerous grants and fellowships. Early in his career, his work focused on the philosophy of logic and mathematics, and the philosophy of the social sciences. For the majority of his career, he concentrated on critical theory, social theory, and political theory, becoming a leading English-language interpreter of Jürgen Habermas. In his later years, he examined theoretical issues concerning racist and imperialist thought, particularly their intersection with theories of progress and development.