Ronald E. Santoni is the Maria Theresa Barney Chair Emeritus of Philosophy at Denison University in Ohio and is a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. He received his B.A. degree from Bishop’s University in Canada, his M.A. from Brown University and his Ph.D. from Boston University. He has been a Visiting Scholar (1986, 1990, 1994, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2008) and a Visiting Lecturer (1990) in The Faculty of Philosophy at University of Cambridge, England; a member of the High Table at King’s College, Cambridge (1999); a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge (1986); a Royal Society of Canada Overseas Fellow at the University of Paris (Sorbonne); and, on five occasions, either a Research Fellow, Visiting Fellow, or Visiting Scholar at Yale University. He continues as an Associate Fellow of Berkeley College, Yale University.

 

In addition to his recently published work on Sartre, entitled Sartre on Violence – Curiously Ambivalent (Penn State University Press, 2003, 2004), he is author of Bad Faith, Good Faith, and Authenticity in Sartre’s Early Philosophy (Temple University Press, 1995), co-editor of the Doubleday Anchor book, Social and Political Philosophy, editor of Religious Language and The Problem of Religious Knowledge, and contributing author of fifteen books, including Current Issues in Philosophy; Towards the Understanding and Prevention of Genocide; Nuclear War: Philosophical Perspectives; Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review; The Institution of War; Just War, Nonviolence, and Nuclear Deterrence; Violence and Human Co-existence; Hiroshima’s Shadows; Jean-Paul Sartre – Das Sein und Das Nichts (a detailed analysis of each part of Being and Nothingness by a group of 13 international scholars); Über Sartre: Perspektiven und Kritiken (2005); Sartre Today: A Centenary Celebration (2006); Sartre: Le Philosophe, l’intellectuel, et la politique (2006), and both Pourquoi Sartre? (2005) and Lebendiger Sartre (2009), in which he offers a tribute to Sartre.

 

A scholar of the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, Santoni has also published over 160 articles, commentaries and reviews in diverse professional philosophical journals and national magazines. His articles have appeared in journals in Russia, Germany, Poland, Sarajevo and France, as well as in North America. In addition, he has presented numerous papers and commentaries on Sartre and other philosophical topics at national and international meetings of professional philosophical societies. In June 2004, he presented a paper at The University of Paris (Sorbonne) following the “presentation” of his new book, Sartre on Violence – Curiously Ambivalent, by Michel Rybalka. In May 2005, he was one of the two invited American scholars to speak at an International Conference at Université D’Amiens/Picardie in France, honoring the centenary of Jean-Paul Sartre’s birth. In March 2011, he was one of the six invited international scholars – and one of two North American philosophers – to present a paper at a special two-day roundtable colloquium focusing on Sartre’s philosophy, held at the University of Lucerne in Switzerland (Universität Luzern), of which he was guest for three days. The papers of the international colloquium – titled “Zur Aktualität Jean-Paul Sartre: Philosophie, Literatur, Politik” – are expected to appear in book form in 2012. 

 

Committed to the integration of scholarship with social concern, he has been an invited speaker at national and international conferences dealing with the morality of violence, war, human co-existence, and nuclear deterrence. He has been past President of both Concerned Philosophers for Peace and International Philosophers for the Prevention of Nuclear Omnicide (IPPNO) (now called International Philosophers for Peace), as well as Vice-president of American and Japanese Professionals Against Nuclear Omnicide (American Division). In 2006, he rejoined the membership of the National Executive Committee of Promoting Enduring Peace, a committee on which he had previously served for more than a decade. In Spring 1964, he was hanged in effigy at the entrance to Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana (an honor for which he is proud) for questioning and standing up against the professional anti-communist agitator and American folk hero Herbert Philbrick, of “I Led Three Lives” fame.

 

A member of the Executive Committee of The North American Sartre Society and coordinator of the Sartre Circle, he is also on the Executive Committee of the Institut für Axiologische Forschungen, and has been a member of the International Advisory Council of the Institute of the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem. Further, he has been a member of the Board of Editors of the Journal for Peace and Justice Studies and a consulting referee for other professional journals and presses.

 

His biography has been included in Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Education, Directory of American Scholars, Contemporary Authors, among other national and international biographical reference books.

 

Ron is married to Marguerite Kiene Santoni, an exemplary, exceptionally caring, life partner, with whom he has had six children who, taken together, have produced for them a creative yield of thirteen grandchildren.