Julian Baggini

Julian Baggini (b. 1968) is a British philosopher and author known for accessible public philosophy. He received his PhD from University College London (1996) with a dissertation on personal identity, and co-founded The Philosophers' Magazine in 1997, editing it for many years. Baggini writes for The Guardian, Financial Times, Prospect, and the BBC, and has served as academic director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy.

His Atheism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2003) is among the most widely used introductions to non-belief, presenting atheism as a positive philosophical position grounded in naturalism rather than mere negation. Baggini distinguishes his stance from the polemical 'New Atheism' associated with Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris, urging respectful engagement with religious thought while maintaining naturalistic commitments. He has argued for an ethics independent of theistic foundations and explored questions of meaning, identity, and the good life in works such as What's It All About? (2004) and The Ego Trick (2011).

In comparative work like How the World Thinks (2018), he widens the philosophical canon beyond Western traditions, treating religious and metaphysical frameworks as serious intellectual cultures. Critics from confessional perspectives challenge his naturalistic assumptions, while some fellow atheists find his irenic tone insufficiently critical. Baggini occupies a distinctive middle ground in contemporary debates about secularism, religion, and public reason.