Prof. Thaddeus Metz

Outline biography:

Professor Thaddeus Metz hails from the United States, where he received his PhD from Cornell University in 1997. He first visited South Africa in 1999 and relocated there in 2004, initially lecturing at Wits and later UJ. He joined the University of Pretoria in 2020.  

Prof Metz has published more than 300 scholarly books, chapters, and articles. Many of them take an analytic approach to the meaning of life, philosophy of religion, African morality, human rights, biomedical ethics, the proper function of a legal system, the role of a university, and a range of related topics in value theory and moral-political philosophy.

Some of Prof Metz's recent books are A Relational Moral Theory: African Ethics in and Beyond the Continent (Oxford University Press 2022) and God, Soul and the Meaning of Life (Cambridge University Press 2019). Recent journal publications include articles in Mind, The Monist, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, Ethik in der Medizin, and Public Health Ethics (all in 2021).  

More than 50 of Prof Metz’s publications have been reprinted, sometimes with translations into other languages such as Chinese, German, Igbo, and Portuguese. Recognition for Prof Metz's research includes him having been designated one of ‘The World’s Top 50 Thinkers’ by Prospect Magazine (2020) and been awarded an ‘A1’ rating from the South African National Research Foundation (2019).

Prof Metz has supervised more than a dozen Doctoral students to completion and hosted eight Post-Doctoral fellows, part of approximately 90 research projects supervised. He has supervised Doctoral students from not just South Africa, but also other parts of the continent such as Botswana, Nigeria, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, while his students have acquired lecturing posts at 10 different South African universities.