Witt double majored at Swarthmore College, graduating in 1975 with degrees in both classics and philosophy. She received her master’s and a doctorate in philosophy from Georgetown University in 1978 and 1980, respectively.

Witt is currently a professor of philosophy and the humanities at the University of New Hampshire, where she chaired the philosophy department from 2000 to 2003. Besides her current professorship, she has previously held appointments at the University of Uppsala and Wayne State University.

Research areas

Witt’s research has generally focused on ancient philosophy, metaphysics and feminist theory. She has written extensively about the metaphysics of gender, Aristotle (especially about Aristotelian metaphysics,) and feminist metaphysics. She has also written and spoken about the relationship between feminist philosophy and the traditional philosophical canon, arguing that feminist philosophy’s enduring interest in the principle has been a process of historical self-justification (that is, justifying why feminist philosophy should exist) and further contends that this is a process nearly identical to that that other emergent disciplines of philosophy undertook as they emerged. She has also published on the philosophy of adoption and the family.

Writing in 1993 in A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity, Witt described herself as subscribing, at least in part, to traditional philosophical paradigms that have found themselves under “feminist attack”.

• Substance and Essence in Aristotle (published in 1989)
• Ways of Being: Potentiality and Actuality in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (2003)
• The Metaphysics of Gender (published in 2010).

She has also edited several volumes, including:

• A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity
• Adoption Matters: Feminist and Philosophical Essays