David McPherson
2021-22 Sabbatical Fellow
Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization

David McPherson is the Benson Center’s first sabbatical fellow and will serve as a visiting research professor during the 2021-22 academic year.

McPherson is an associate professor of philosophy at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. He received a PhD in philosophy in 2013 and an MA in philosophy from Marquette University, and a BA in philosophy summa cum laude from Bethel University.

At the Benson Center, McPherson is working on a book project titled Spiritual Alienation and the Quest for God. This book articulates, explores and responds to the problem of spiritual alienation, which is the state of being “estranged from human fulfillment,” and which he argues is a perennial feature of the human condition but is exacerbated within the conditions of Western modernity, such as secularity.

This book project builds on his previous book monographs, Virtue and Meaning: A Neo-Aristotelian Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and The Virtues of Limits (Oxford University Press, 2022), and his edited volume, Spirituality and the Good Life: Philosophical Approaches (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

His research specializations are in ethics (especially virtue ethics), political philosophy, meaning in life, and philosophy of religion.