Rate My Professor Matthew Altman

Matthew Altman is Professor and Department Chair in the Department of Philosophy and Comparative Religion at Central Washington University, where he has been on the faculty since 2003, serving previously as Chair from 2013 to 2018. He earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Chicago in 2001 and a B.A. from Albion College in 1994. Altman's research and teaching interests include applied ethics, philosophy of law especially punishment, Kant and nineteenth-century German philosophy, social and political philosophy, normative ethics, and philosophy of art. He teaches courses such as PHIL 301 Change the World through Public Philosophy, PHIL 306 Environmental Ethics, PHIL 308 Medical Ethics, PHIL 347 Philosophy of Law, PHIL 354 Kant and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy, PHIL 403 Philosophy of Art, and honors seminars on mass incarceration and abortions and executions.

Altman has published extensively on ethics, punishment, and German philosophy. Recent works include co-authoring The Hackett Introduction to Medical Ethics: A Guide for Students, Clinicians, and Ethics Committees with Cynthia D. Coe (Hackett, 2025); co-editing Ethics and Medical Technology: Essays on Artificial Intelligence, Enhancement, Privacy, and Justice with David Schwan (Springer, 2025) and contributing the chapter "Preserving Autonomy, Promoting Health: A Defense of Digital Nudging in Healthcare"; editing The Palgrave Handbook on the Philosophy of Punishment (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) with his chapter "In Defense of a Mixed Theory of Punishment"; "Reframing the Debate over Performance-Enhancing Drugs: The Reasonable Athlete Argument" in Sport, Ethics and Philosophy (2025); "What Do Philosophers Do?" in Pli (2024); and "The Justification and Scope of Restorative Justice" in International Journal of Restorative Justice (2023). Other significant publications are Kant and Applied Ethics: The Uses and Limits of Kant's Practical Philosophy (2014) and A Theory of Legal Punishment: Deterrence, Retribution, and the Aims of the State (2021). He is series editor for Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism and received the Distinguished Faculty of Service award in 2019.