Peter van Inwagen

Peter van Inwagen (born 1942) is an American philosopher and theologian, one of the leading figures in contemporary metaphysics, philosophy of religion and philosophy of action. Working within the analytic tradition, he has shaped how current debates about human freedom and the composition of material objects are framed.

He is the John Cardinal O'Hara Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and has previously taught at Syracuse University. He earned his undergraduate degree at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1965 and his PhD at the University of Rochester in 1969, under Richard Clyde Taylor. His 1983 book An Essay on Free Will helped restore libertarianism to mainstream analytic philosophy, and introduced the term incompatibilism for the view that free will is incompatible with determinism.

His consequence argument holds that if determinism is true, our acts follow from the laws of nature and from events in the remote past, neither of which is up to us. In Material Beings (1990) he argues that only elementary particles and living organisms exist, so that everyday objects such as tables and chairs are arrangements of particles, much like a swarm of bees. His Metaphysics (1993) and Ontology, Identity, and Modality (2001) gather much of his later work.

Van Inwagen has also written on the problem of evil and on the resurrection of the body, approaching both from a Christian standpoint. His influence is felt most in the way contemporary analytic philosophy frames the debates over freedom and composition.