About: Matthew Stuart (philosopher)

Matthew Stuart (born 1966/1967) is an American philosopher and a professor of philosophy at Bowdoin College. His primary work is in the field of Early Modern Philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics and focuses on the philosophy of John Locke. He is the author of Locke’s Metaphysics (Oxford Clarendon Press, 2013) in which he takes a unique approach to John Locke's work "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" to view it as a strong Metaphysical text, rather than just that of epistemology. Some ideas approached in his book focus on "Locke's denial that bodies can be co-located", that "empty spaces within a body are not parts of [them]", that "[Locke's] relativism about identity equips him to respond to objects to his account of personal identity", and that of Locke's "rejection of