Career

Peter studied Mathematics and Philosophy at the University of Manchester, where he was supervised by Wolfe Mays. There he co-founded, with Kevin Mulligan and Barry Smith, the Seminar for Austro-German Philosophy (1975–85). After working briefly as a librarian he became Lecturer in Philosophy at Bolton Institute of Technology (now the University of Bolton), who awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2012. In 1980 he moved to Austria and lectured at the University of Salzburg until 1995, gaining his Habilitation in 1986 and becoming an Austrian citizen in 1988. Visits to the University of California, Irvine and the University of Texas at Austin were interspersed with teaching in Neuchâtel, Geneva, Fribourg, Berne and Innsbruck. From 1995-2009 he was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leeds. From 1989-2001 he worked as a consultant to the software company Ontek Corporation. In 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, in 2006 a Member of the Academia Europaea, in 2013 to the Royal Irish Academy and in 2017 to the Polish Academy of Sciences. From 2009 to 2016 he held the Chair of Moral Philosophy (1837) at Trinity College Dublin. He is married with two children and four grandchildren; his hobbies include walking, choral singing (currently with the Chichester Singers) and reading ridiculously thick and heavy history books.