Douglas B. Rasmussen

Prof. Douglas B. Rasmussen

Professor of Philosophy, St. John

Douglas Rasmussen has been a member of the Philosophy Department since 1981.  Dr. Rasmussen has authored numerous articles in such journals as American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, American Philosophical Quarterly, International Philosophical Quarterly, The New Scholasticism, The Personalist, Public Affairs Quarterly, The Review of Metaphysics, Social Philosophy and Policy, The Thomist, and in many scholarly anthologies. He guest-edited TELEOLOGY & THE FOUNDATION OF VALUE—the January 1992 (Volume 75, No. 1) issue of The Monist.

Dr. Rasmussen has been awarded grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Humane Studies, and the Earhart Foundation.  He was a Visiting Research Scholar at the  following institutions: Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, in the spring of 2001 and the summer of 2008; the Université Pantheon—Assas Paris II in the summer of 2002; Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, for 1998–1999; and the Heritage Foundation in the spring of 1989.  He received that Matchette Award twice from the American Catholic Philosophical Association for outstanding paper by a younger scholar. Dr. Rasmussen has lectured widely throughout the United States and Europe and has directed numerous colloquia and symposia for various educational foundations.  He has served on the Steering Committee of the Ayn Rand Society and is a member of the Executive Council of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.

He received the Medal for Outstanding Faculty Achievement from St. John’s University, Honors Convocation, June 1994. Recently, his co-authored book, Norms of Liberty, was the subject of a new book, Reading Rasmussen and Den Uyl: Critical Essays on "Norms of Liberty" (2008), edited by Aeon J. Skoble.

Dr. Rasmussen is currently working on two books:  The Perfectionist Turn and The Illiberality of Human Capabilities Liberalism.



  • Ph.D., Philosophy, Marquette University, 1980
  • B.A., Philosophy, Economics, University of Iowa, 1971

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