Julie Walsh is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wellesley College, who specializes in the metaphysics and ethics of human freedom in the early modern period. She received her MA and PhD in philosophy from the University of Western Ontario, and her BA (Hons.), with a major in philosophy and a double minor in religion and zoology in from the University of Toronto. Before coming to Wellesley, she was an assistant professor in the department of philosophy at the Université du Québec à Montréal (2012-2015), and held a fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada in the department of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego (2010-2012).
Walsh's work centers around conceptions of volition, which, in the early modern period, intersected with theories of perception, motivation, intellect, imagination, the psycho-physical interface, moral responsibility, and freedom. To date, her published work has treated the vexed notions of volition and freedom in the systems of the French Oratorian Nicolas Malebranche and the British philosopher John Locke.
More recently, she has shifted her attention to how early modern views of physiology inform or underlie commitments about human freedom in the early modern period. This line of inquiry requires an analysis of how thinkers conceived of the function and behavior of animal spirits and their influence on the imagination and overall health of the body. Looking at moral responsibility and freedom from the perspective of environmental and social factors that influence the animal spirits allows us to better appreciate the complexity of moral theories in the period, and to see how responsibility ought (and ought not) to be attributed. Her new work also turns to the figures Anton Amo and Gabrielle Suchon.
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