John Lysaker, PhD

John Lysaker is the William R. Kenan University Professor. Educated at Kenyon College and Vanderbilt University, he joined Emory's Philosophy Department in 2009 after thirteen years at the University of Oregon. He came to the Center for Ethics in the summer of 2024.

Lysaker's central interest remains the good life writ large and various phenomena that enable and/or frustrate its emergence, including character and metacognition, artworks, serious mental illness, and friendship.

As a scholar, he has authored six monographs, co-authored another, and co-edited a collection of essays. In addition, he has written eighty scholarly articles and chapters and delivered over a hundred lectures and presentations. Recent publications have appeared in JAMA Psychiatry, The Georgia Review, and The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Current work focuses on friendship as a core good and source of moral growth, moral perfectionism as an essential element of ethical life, virtues such as honesty, integrity, and generosity, and the possibility for shared deliberation in the development and pursuit of treatment protocols for people struggling with psychosis.

In addition to regular scholarly presentations, Lysaker is committed to public engagement, ranging from high school groups to art museums, religious communities, and civic agencies. All spaces are ethics spaces on his view, and ripe for conversations that can be prove transformative.