Seth Lazar, Philosopher and Photographer

Thanks for visiting my site. I’ve set it up to offer an introduction to my work, as both a photographer and a philosopher.

I’m a philosopher, trained in analytical political and moral philosophy, with a special interest in the ethics of killing, and issues in global ethics. My D.Phil., which was supervised by Henry Shue and examined and passed by David Rodin and Jeff McMahan in February 2009, was on the ethics of war. Sections of the thesis received the APA’s 2010-2011 Frank Chapman Sharp prize for the best unpublished monograph on the philosophy of war and peace. Much of it has now been published, in Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Journal of Political Philosophy, and Journal of Applied Philosophy. I have a contract with OUP (Philosophy) to write a book on the ethics of war, provisionally titled Justifying War. At present I am working on a different book, on the principle of distinction between combatants and noncombatants in war.  I’m also co-editing a volume on National Defence, forthcoming with OUP, and an Oxford Handbook of the Ethics of War. You can read about my writing projects by following the links above and to the side, where you can also see my published work. After the D.Phil., I stayed in Oxford for a postdoc at the Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, until September 2011, when I joined the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University, where I am now a continuing research fellow in the new Centre for Moral, Social and Political Theory. I was just awarded an ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award, worth $366,000 over three years.

I love philosophy, it’s an incredibly creative, collaborative, rewarding experience. It’s not all that I do, however, I’m also a keen photographer. I started out with travel photography, and am always looking to expand my portfolio. My panoramic pictures of Oxford can be bought in Oxford stores and at www.oxford-panoramas.co.uk. From March to September 2009, I took time out of my academic career to travel around Africa with my wife, Lu, on public transport from Agadir in Morocco to Zagazig in Egypt, stopping at a town beginning with every letter of the alphabet on the way (we crossed the contintent from north to south, down the western side, travelling more than 20,000 miles overland). You can read about our trip at www.alphabettravel.com. You can see a collection of all my photography at www.sethlazar.com. My photos have won a few different competitions (e.g. here and here) but I am most proud of having finished runner up in the Wanderlust Travel Photo of the Year competition for 2010. I’ve also done some amateur wedding photography for family and friends. These days I mostly take pictures and video of our son Amos, our dog Fuji, and the lovely Australian countryside and wildlife.