Lisa Widdison, Ph.D.

Lisa Widdison is a researcher and specialist in the history of philosophy and philosophical literature on art, nature, metaphysics, emotions and theories of knowledge, East and West. Since her time as an undergraduate, she has studied philosophy and literature in far-reaching locales, including Kerala, India, Cork, Ireland, Los Angeles and Honolulu. She has worked as a Research Assistant in the School of Pacific Asian Studies and with the Eastern Philosophies of Consciousness Program at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and is currently conducting research in Environmental Aesthetics, having been a Fellow of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers – American Institute of India Studies 2024 Overseas Faculty Development Seminar in India. She recently contributed a Book Chapter to and co-edited the 2024 volume Traditional Indian Virtue Ethics for Today, An East-West Dialogue.

Her guided research topics include Feminist Ethics of Care and Philosophies of India. As her thesis focused on Sanskrit aesthetic theories of emotions and Western analytic theories of knowledge, Widdison’s dissertation incorporated her cross-cultural research on theories of consciousness into a hybrid account of the concepts of taste and the sublime.

She maintains a strong practice of participating in readings of classical Sanskrit literature with scholars from around the globe in theology, poetry and philosophy. She also maintains an interest in Āyurvedic medicine, Indigenous practices, Hawaiian concepts of ecology and sustainability. She has been a supporter of the Philosophy for Children program (P4C Hawai‘i) and the Philosophy Students Association in Mānoa. In the community, Lisa volunteered at a number of public schools to teach students from diverse backgrounds philosophy for children through literature. She has also volunteered at the East-West Center, Honolulu as a community gardener, addressing issues of sustainability.

Her interest in care for the environment led her to work with environmental activists on reforestation projects, issues of biodiversity, and the propagation of endangered species on Kaua‘i, which she shares in lectures supplemented by a nature photography pastime. Currently, she is writing on the ethics of hospitality: a moral-psychology of wonder as an emotion; metaphysical perspectives and critical issues around the concept of “water,” and the uniquely American aesthetic idea of natural preserves.

Widdison has taught a diverse range of courses, including American Philosophy, and Philosophies of Asia and the Pacific, in the History, Humanities, and International Studies Department at Hawaii Pacific University. As a lecturer at the University of Hawai‘i, West O‘ahu and Mānoa, Widdison also taught Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy, Intermediate Sanskrit, Environmental Philosophy, Deductive Logic, World Philosophies, Ethics, Philosophy of Law, Social and Political Philosophy, and Epistemology.