Brief Biography

Paul Kurtz was born on 21 December 1925 in Newark, New Jersey. He received his BA from New York University in 1948, then went to Columbia University, where he earned his MA in 1949 and his PhD in philosophy in 1952. The title of his dissertation was “The Problems of Value Theory.” From 1952 to 1959, Kurtz taught at Trinity College in Connecticut. He then was a professor of philosophy at Union College in New York State from 1961 to 1965, and during that time he also was a visiting lecturer at the New School for Social Research. In 1965 Kurtz became professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and taught there until retiring in 1991. He founded a publishing company, Prometheus Books, in 1969 in Amherst, New York. He remains Chairman of Prometheus Books, and has added many other responsibilities during his career. Kurtz was chair of the Center for Inquiry, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and the Council for Secular Humanism from their foundings until June 2009. Kurtz is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 1992, and had authored or edited over fifty books and many hundreds of articles.

                 Kurtz carries on the legacy of the pragmatic and naturalistic humanism that he acquired while at Columbia. Committed to the superior rationality of scientific inquiry, he has staunchly defended science and reason against all forms of superstition, mythology, and fraudulent deception. Kurtz is founder and chair emeritus of the Center for Inquiry Transnational in Amherst, New York; and similarly he is the chair emeritus of the Committee for Scientific Inquiry (which he founded in 1976 as Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal) and he is chair Emeritus of the Council for Secular Humanism (which he founded in 1980 as the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism). He is is the editor-in-chief of the magazine Free Inquiry. He was co-President of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, and is a Humanist Laureate and President of the International Academy of Humanism. He is former editor of The Humanist Magazine.

                Kurtz has argued for a comprehensive philosophy of secular humanism in his many books. Long involved with the American Humanist Association, he drafted the Manifesto II with Edwin Wilson in 1973. Humanist principles such as grounding morality in human happiness and not supernatural revelation, and demanding respect for individual liberty, support an active democratic culture that encourages free participation by all citizens. Humanistic ethics in Kurtz’s hands takes a broadly utilitarian concern for the long-term welfare of all people, but restricts this utilitarianism by appeal to basic liberty rights and adds a communitarian respect for social groups.

                Several of his books present his philosophical views of science, naturalism, ethical theory and political theory. In the areas of philosophy of science and naturalism, central works are The Transcendental Temptation: A Critique of Religion and the Paranormal (1986), Philosophical Essays in Pragmatic Naturalism (1991), The New Skepticism: Inquiry and Reliable Knowledge (1992), and Skepticism and Humanism: The New Paradigm (2001). Recent books develop his humanistic ethics: Forbidden Fruit: The Ethics of Humanism (1987), Eupraxophy: Living without Religion (1989), The Courage to Become: The Virtues of Humanism (1997), and Affirmations: Joyful and Creative Exuberance (2004).

                Books about Paul Kurtz include Toward a New Enlightenment: The Philosophy of Paul Kurtz (Transaction, 1994), and Promethean Love: Paul Kurtz and the Humanistic Perspective on Love (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006).