Ryan Darr

Ryan Darr is a Postdoctoral Associate in Religion, Ecology, and Expressive Culture. From 2019 to 2022, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Philosophy and Religion at the Princeton University Center for Human Values. He holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Yale University. Ryan is a religious ethicist. He is currently working on a book that draws from theology, philosophy, and literature to address ethical issues surrounding the emerging mass extinction event. The book situates the value of biodiversity conservation in relation to other ethical goods, including animal welfare, social justice, and decolonization. It also considers the role of grief, ritual, and the arts in recognizing and valuing the species we are losing. In addition, he is further developing work on longstanding interests in the relationship between individual responsibility, harm causation, and structural injustice. His first book, The Best Effect: Theology and the Origins of Consequentialism, will be published by the University of Chicago Press in 2023. The book offers a new, robustly theological story of the origin of consequentialism, one of the most influential views in modern moral theory. It uses the new historical account to intervene in contemporary ethical debates about consequentialism and about how ethicists conceive of goods, ends, agency, and causality. You can find more information on Ryan’s work here.