Laurence Houlgate
Laurence D. Houlgate (born 1938) is an American philosopher, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and former department chair at California Polytechnic State University. He specializes in the history of Western philosophy, social ethics, philosophy of law and political philosophy. Houlgate was one of the first philosophers in the 20th century to theorize about the moral foundations of children's rights and the ethics of family relationships. After his retirement, Professor Houlgate wrote a popular series of eight study guides on the classical philosophers for beginning philosophy students. Houlgate also stood as the Democratic Party candidate for his district in  the California State Assembly election of 2000 and California State Assembly election, 2002. Career. Laurence Houlgate did his undergraduate work in philosophy at California State University, Los Angeles. After the new degree in philosophy was approved by the administration in 1960, Houlgate was the first student to graduate from CSULA with a B.A. in Philosophy. His mentor was Professor Henry Alexander. On his recommendation, Laurence enrolled as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. He later transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles to study under H.L.A. Hart (who was there as a Visiting Professor) and Herbert  Morris, one of Hart's students at Oxford and a recent appointee at UCLA. Houlgate received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Philosophy from UCLA in 1967, having written his dissertation under the direction of Professor Herbert Morris. Houlgate's first full-time appointment was as a lecturer in philosophy at California State University, Fullerton. After two years, he accepted a position at the University of California, Santa Barbara (1966). Houlgate accepted a visiting professorship for one year at Reed College (Oregon) (1972-1973), and later accepted an offer to teach at George Mason University (Virginia). He remained at GMU  for six years (1973-1979) and in 1979, accepted a permanent position at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where he was appointed Professor of Philosophy (1980) and served as department chair from 1990 to 1995. He retired from CSUSLO as Emeritus Professor of Philosophy in 2002. Professor Houlgate's first published works were in the area of philosophy of law. He wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the general topic of excuses in criminal law, with a special emphasis on the excuses of mistake and ignorance of fact. He later published several articles in philosophical journals based on chapters  in the dissertation. In the next stage of his career, Houlgate spent one academic year as a fellow at the University of Virginia School of Law. He did research on the legal rights of children and later published one of the first philosophical books on this topic ("The Child and the State"). In subsequent years, he turned to the study of the philosophical foundations of family law and the ethics of family relationships. This research led to a monograph on the philosophy of family law ("Family and State"), a reader on family ethics ("Morals, Marriage and Parenthood"), and a collection  of his previously published articles ("Children's Rights, State Intervention, Custody And Divorce: Contradictions in Ethics And Family Law)". In his post-retirement years, Houlgate twice ran for and won elections to be the Democratic Party candidate for the California State Assembly. He later twice lost the general election to the incumbent, as had every Democratic candidate during the previous 50 years. In 2016, Professor Houlgate decided to keep a promise to his former students to write a series of study guides on the classical philosophers. There are now six of these philosophy guides, published as a series under the  title "The Smart Student's Guides to Philosophical Classics". He also kept a promise to his colleagues who teach courses in the philosophy of law to write a textbook based exclusively on family law cases. That book was published in 2016 under the title "Philosophy, Law and Family: A New Introduction to the Philosophy of Law". The book is published by Springer International. Read more about Houlgate's life and post-retirement activities in the San Luis Obispo Central Coast Journal (follow the arrow to frame #10).https://indd.adobe.com/view/8ce99641-b409-41fe-bca0-d34fb5f71ee9