Junior Research Fellow, Philosophy, Christ's College, University of Cambridge

Farbod Akhlaghi is a philosopher whose primary research interests lie in metaphysics, moral philosophy, and their intersections. In moral debate, we often wonder whether there are objective moral facts or whether it is all a matter of opinion, or whether moral properties like rightness or wrongness exist. Those are questions in meta-ethics and are specifically metaphysical questions about morality. When confronted with metaphysical questions, we might wonder how best to understand these questions and what methodology is required to answer them. Those questions are explored in an area known, perhaps unfortunately, as meta-metaphysics. Farbod’s primary work brings together these areas of philosophy and aims to advance debate in each on their own and in their intersection. This, Farbod argues, has significant consequences for reflection on both the nature of morality and of metaphysics, which he is exploring further at Christ’s College.

Farbod’s other research interests span several different areas of philosophy. One major series of his interests are in ethics. There, his current focus is on the ethics of transformative experiences, and on the ethics of actions that affect our chances of fulfilling moral obligations in the future. His other interests include transformative experiences more generally, epistemology, political philosophy, the philosophies of race, education, and culture, the nature of philosophy itself, and the history of philosophy (esp. British and Classical Islamic moral philosophy and metaphysics).

Before Christ’s, Farbod read for his DPhil in philosophy at the University of Oxford, first at Oriel College funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and then at St Anne’s College where he held a Graduate Development Scholarship and an Aristotelian Society Bursary. He was supervised by Prof Roger Crisp and Prof Timothy Williamson. He received his BA from the University of Reading, his MLitt from the St Andrews/Stirling Philosophy Graduate Programme (SASP), and his MPhil from the University of Cambridge. Before all of that, Farbod was born in the UK and grew up across England, South Africa, and throughout the Middle East.