Sean Dorrance Kelly is an American philosopher, currently the Teresa G. and Ferdinand F. Martignetti Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University, and the Dean of Harvard's Arts and Humanities division. He was formerly Faculty Dean of Dunster House, succeeding Roger Porter. He is an expert on phenomenology and philosophy of mind.
Education and career
A graduate of Brown University, he received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1998, and was an assistant professor of philosophy at Princeton University from 1999 until 2006, when he moved to Harvard. He is known for his expertise on various aspects of the philosophical, phenomenological, and cognitive neuroscientific nature of human experience.Book Review: All Things Shining, by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly He is featured in Tao Ruspoli's film Being in the World.
Kelly was appointed as Harvard College's dean of Arts and Humanities in April 2024, with his term starting in July. He stepped down as faculty dean of Dunster House effective July 2025 as a result of his appointment. Kelly was succeeded by Taeku Lee.
Books The Relevance of Phenomenology to the Philosophy of Language and Mind (Studies in Philosophy), Sean D. Kelly, Routledge, 2000 All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, Free Press, 2011
Articles Chapter 6. Edmund Husserl and Phenomenology
See also Critique of technology Hubert Dreyfus
References
External links Sean Dorrance Kelly All Things Shining Sean Dorrance Kelly on lack of the sacred in our existence