In 1919, friends of Professor George Holmes Howison, many of whom had also been his students, established the Howison Lectures in Philosophy at the University of California. In their bequest, the donors wrote, "Professor Howison held the reasoned conviction that this world to its very depth is kindred to the human spirit; that it is a community of free persons, finite and infinite, sustained by the vision of the Perfect; and all his great powers were directed to awaken in others a loyalty to these ideas. And those, it would seem, would most speak from a foundation in his memory who were able to share with him this high purpose and conviction."

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Title	Lecturer	Year
The Demarcation Problem for Philosophy	Stephen Yablo	2022
Counterfactuals, Compatiblism, and Rational Choice	Robert Stalnaker	2021
Progress in the Sciences and in the Arts	Philip Kitcher	2019
Identity and Social Bonds	Joseph Raz	2018
Cicero’s De Officiis – Stoic Ethics for Non-Stoics	Gisela Striker	2017
Animal Selves and the Good	Christine M. Korsgaard	2016
The Philosophy of “As If”	Kwame Anthony Appiah	2015
The Theoretical Impulse in Plato and Aristotle	Sarah Broadie	2014
Reason, Genealogy, and the Hermeneutics of Magnanimity	Robert Brandom	2013
Death and the Ancient Philosophers	Jonathan Barnes	2012
Proof, Truth, Hands, and Mind	Ian Hacking	2010
Thinking and Talking About the Self	John Perry	2009
What We See	Fred Dretske	2007
The Ethics of Blame	Thomas Scanlon	2007
Intention in Action	John McDowell	2006
Normativity	Judith Jarvis Thomson	2005
The Meaning of “Ouch” and “Oops”	David Kaplan	2004
Truth, Interpretation, and the Point of Moral Philosophy	Ronald M. Dworkin	2002
Philosophy the Day After Tomorrow – Moments in Nietzsche, Jane Austen, et cetera	Stanley Cavell	2002
The Wittgensteinian Event	Stanley Cavell	2002
On Aristotle’s Notion of the Soul	Michael Frede	2000
The Dappled World	Nancy Cartwright	1999
Anger and Revenge	Myles Burnyeat	1996
Ancient Freedoms	Myles Burnyeat	1996
Happiness and Tranquility	Myles Burnyeat	1996
Naturalism and Dualism in the Study of Language and Mind	Noam Chomsky	1994
Morality, Law and Politics	Jürgen Habermas	1988
The Concept of Practical Reason	Jürgen Habermas	1988
Philosophy and the Fragments of Enlightenment	Bernard Williams	1988
Moral Conflict and Political Legitimacy	Thomas Nagel	1987
The Justification of Logical Laws	Michael A. E. Dummett	1986
A Reconception of Philosophy	Nelson Goodman	1985
The Socratic Fallacy	Gregory Vlastos	1984
Socrates’ Disavowal of Knowledge	Gregory Vlastos	1984
Relativism	Richard Rorty	1983
Why There Isn’t a Ready-Made World	Hilary Putnam	1981
The Transcendence of Reason	Hilary Putnam	1981
Truth and Subjectivity	Michel Foucault	1980
Causal Explanation	David Lewis	1979
Constructivist Moral Conceptions	John Rawls	1979
The Limits of Rationality	Patrick Suppes	1979
The Identity of the Self: Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing?	Robert Nozick	1978
Reference and Its Roots	Peter F. Strawson	1977
Perception and Its Objects	Peter F. Strawson	1977
Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language: An Exposition	Saul Kripke	1977
Truth, Determinism and Uncertainty	Gunther Patzing	1971
Sincerity and Uncertainty	Stuart N. Hampshire	1968
Problems of Induction	Carl G. Hempel	1964
Causes of Belief and Reasons for Belief	Henry H. Price	1963
The Intentionality of Sensation: A Grammatical Feature	Elizabeth Anscombe	1963
Assertion	Peter Geach	1963
Man, Techniques, and Meta-Techniques	Gabriel Honor Marcel	1961
The Cognitive Status of Theories	Ernest Nagel	1960
The Assuming of Objects	Willard Van Orman Quine	1959
Paradox and Discovery	John Wisdom	1957
Aristotle’s Contribution to the Theory and Practice of Historiography	Kurt von Fritz	1957
Logic and Philosophy	I.M. Bochenski	1956
Mysticism and Human Reason	Walter T. Stace	1954
Some Problems in the Theory of Meaning	Gilbert Ryle	1954
The Impasse of Ethics and a Way Out	Brand Blanshard	1954
The Acceptance of Time	George Boas	1949
Untitled	Wilmon Henry Sheldon	1946
The History of Townsend	Harvey Gates Townsend	1945
The Method of Knowledge in Philosophy	Curt John Ducasse	1944
Philosophy Goes to War	Charles Montague Bakewell	1943
Certainty	George Edward Moore	1941
Social Studies and Objectivity	George Holland Sabine	1941
Why Religions Die	James B. Pratt	1940
Empiricism and Natural Knowledge	Sterling Power Lamprecht	1938
Politics and Morals in Spinoza	David W. Prall	1938
Limits of Cognition and Exigencies of Action	Heinrich Gomperz	1937
Knowledge and Self-Consciousness	Henry W. Stuart	1936
An Approach to a Theory of Nature	Frederick J. E. Woodbridge	1935
Perspective and Contact in the Meaning Situation	G. Watts Cunningham	1934
Theory and Practice	F. C. S. Schiller	1933
The Uniqueness of Man	Walter Goodnow Everett	1932
Thought and Context	John Dewey	1931
Recent Ethical Theories	James H. Tufts	1930
Untitled	Robert Mark Wenley	1929
Space and Time	Evander Bradley McGilvary	1927
The Pragmatic Element in Knowledge	Clarence Irving Lewis	1926
A Modernist View of National Ideals	Ralph Barton Perry	1925
Time and the Fourth Dimension	William Pepperell Montague	1925
The Discontinuities of Evolution	Arthur Oncken Lovejoy	1923
Realism and Mysticism	William Ernest Hocking	1922
Intuition and Idealism	William Ernest Hocking	1922
Naturalism and the Belief in Purpose	William Ernest Hocking	1922