Peter S. Fosl

Peter Fosl graduated from Freedom High School in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1981 and then summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Bucknell University in 1985 with Bachelor of Arts degrees in both philosophy and economics; he spent the Lent Term of 1984 at the London School of Economics. In 1986, Fosl became a Woodruff Fellow at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, winning Emory's Award for Excellence in Graduate Research in 1989 and taking a Master of Arts in Philosophy the following year. During the 1990-91 academic year, Fosl was a Fulbright Student at the University of Edinburgh. In 1992 Fosl received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Emory, writing his dissertation, Skepticism and the Promise of Philosophy, under the direction of Donald W. Livingston. He does not hold an undergraduate or graduate degree in creative writing, though he was influenced by the program at Hollins College.

From 1992–1998 Fosl served as an assistant professor at Hollins College outside Roanoke, Virginia, where he was tenured and promoted to associate professor in early 1998. Later that same year, Fosl took an appointment as associate professor of philosophy at Transylvania University where he received a Bingham Award for Teaching Excellence; he chaired the philosophy program there from 1999 to 2017, expect for sabbaticals and other leaves. In 2004, Fosl was promoted to full professor and in 2005 named Transylvania's Professor of the Year. From 2004-2006, Fosl was Transylvania's Bingham-Young Professor, a circulating endowed professorship, and director of the university's Bingham-Young program on Liberty, Security and Justice.

In 2006, Fosl was honored with the Acorn Award as outstanding professor in the state of Kentucky at a four-year public or private university (a second Acorn recognizes a Kentucky community college professor). Fosl's award noted the "outstanding quality of his teaching, expertise in his fields of study, the originality of courses and scholarship, and the role he plays as a mentor…." That same year he was named a Kentucky Colonel.

During the 2013–14 academic year, Fosl was the David Hume Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh. During the 2017-18 academic year he was the John William Miller Fellow at Williams College.

Fosl is author of a research monograph, Hume’s Scepticism: Pyrronian and Academic (Edinburgh UP, 2020). He is co-author with Julian Baggini of The Philosopher's Toolkiit (translated into seven languages, third edition 2020) and The Ethics Toolkit, and with Galen Foresman and Carlin Watson he co-authored The Critical Thinking Toolkit (all three Wiley-Blackwell Publishing). With David E. Cooper he co-edited, Philosophy: The Classic Readings (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). Fosl is the editor of The Big Lebowski and Philosophy and has contributed essays to the Blackwell philosophy and popular culture series [words excised]. He is co-editor of Commonplace Commitments (Bucknell UP, 2016) as well as the two-volume Dictionary of Literary Biography: British Philosophers 1500-1799 and 1800-2000 (published by Thomson Gale). Since 2004, he has been editor in-chief of the peer-reviewed Open Access academic journal, Cogent Arts & Humanities, published by Taylor & Francis.

Fosl is also the author of various articles [words excised] on the history of philosophy, skepticism, David Hume, the philosophy of religion, ethics, and philosophical method; he has published in Hume Studies, The Journal of the History of Philosophy, Cavell Studies, and 1650-1850. He has been a contributing editor to The Philosophers' Magazine and a panelist with AskPhilosophers.org.