PHILIP PETTIT jointly holds a position as Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Australian National University and L.S. Rockefeller University Professor of Human Values at Princeton University, where he has taught political theory and philosophy since 2002. He has been at the ANU under this joint appointment since 2013.

Born and raised in Ireland, he was a lecturer in University College, Dublin, a Research Fellow at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bradford, before moving in 1983 to the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University; there he held a professorial position jointly in Social and Political Theory and Philosophy until 2002.

He was appointed Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in 2017.

He was elected fellow of Academy of Social Sciences in Australia in 1987 and the Australian Academy of Humanities in 1988. He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009, as an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2010, as a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 2013, and Correspondant en Philosophie de l’Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (Institut de France) 2019-. He has been awarded honorary degrees by the National University of Ireland (Dublin), the University of Crete, Lund University, Universite de Montreal, Queen's University, Belfast, the University of Athens and the University of Buenos Aires. Common Minds: Themes from the Philosophy of Philip Pettit appeared from OUP in 2007, edited by Geoffrey Brennan, R.E.Goodin, Frank Jackson and Michael Smith. 

He works in moral and political theory and on background issues in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics. He gave the Seeley Lectures at the University of Cambridge in 2010, which were published as On the People's Terms in 2012; the Uehiro Lectures in Ethics at Oxford University in 2011, which appeared as The Robust Demands of the Good in 2015; the Tanner Lectures in Berkeley in 2015, which appeared in 2018 as The Birth of Ethics; and the John Locke Lectures in Philosophy at Oxford University in 2019, which is due to appear as When Minds Converse.

Political ontology: the nature of norms, law, group agency, the state, law etc

Political values: the demands of respect, freedom, justice, etc (domestically and internationally).

Moral philosophy: the natural origin of ethical ideas, the robust demands of various values, the connection of the good and the right (consequentialism)

Philosophy of mind: mental causation, corporate minds, human mentality and language

Philosophy of social science: explanation, hierarchy of levels, progam model.