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Rodney Peffer

Rodney Peffer
Rodney Peffer

Hooke early on

California professor, ISU alumnus traces his interest to early philosophy course.

It was the third quarter of Rodney Peffer's freshman year at Iowa State when he took his first philosophy course. He was hooked.

Peffer is a professor of philosophy and a member of the University of San Diego faculty since 1986. He's lectured on such topics as social justice and morality throughout North America and on other continents. He's authored one book and another is on the way. And it was that one class in the early 1970s that ignited his passion.

"Like a lot of students, about every quarter I was changing majors my first year," recalled Peffer, who took stabs at psychology and political science. "Then I took my first philosophy class. It was team taught by Joe Kupfer, who had just come to Iowa State, Dick Van Iten, then the department head, and others."

Peffer called it a "wonderful course" that covered five books including Plato's Symposium and Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto.

"I think about halfway through the course I just was so interested in it that I knew this was the main thing I wanted to study. That was the one course in my entire academic career that most influenced me."

Peffer graduated from Iowa State in 1975 with a B.A. in distributed studies. In fall 2007 he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Department of Philosophy and Religous Studies.

Peffer started school in Battle Creek, a small western Iowa farming town, before moving to Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley. His family returned to Iowa, and he finished high school in Battle Creek's largest-ever graduating class - 36 students.

He thought he would eventually return to California, but decided to attend Iowa State. "That was a great choice for me. I had a great experience and a great education here," he said.

He appreciated that the Iowa State philosophy program did not have graduate students and faculty focused their attention on undergraduates. Said Peffer, "A student not only had direct access to your profs, but you could also become friends with them."

He has maintained "lifelong, deep friendships" with faculty including Kupfer, Bill Robinson and others who left the department. It was Kupfer who introduced him prior to his receiving his LAS award.

"He's a laid-back Californian with good Iowa values," Kupfer stated. "He thought globally before globalization became a catch phrase."

During his undergraduate days and even early on in graduate school at the University of Arizona, Peffer questioned whether philosophy was in his future even though he loved it.

"I went to Arizona aiming at a Ph.D., but even then - and maybe I was a little naïve and unconcerned - I wondered whether I could make a career out of it. But I just loved philosophy so much that I wanted to continue to study it. I didn't know at that time if I could write well enough to get anything published. But I always knew I'd be interested in philosophy."

He considered becoming an attorney, but he was encouraged by his professors to stay in philosophy. Peffer recalls his mentor, renowned philosopher Wilfrid Sellars, saying, "Don't you realize that you have a capacity that most students don't have?"

Peffer replied, "No, actually I don't. What is it?"

Sellars explained that there were many bright people in the world, but Peffer had the capacity for sustained argument, fundamental to solid philosophical dialogue.

"He told me, 'You can put one idea together after another, after another, after another, to put the whole discourse together,'" Peffer said.

At Arizona Peffer studied with the well-known philosophers Joel Feinberg, Allen E. Buchanan, Jeffrie G. Murphy, Ronald Milo, Keith Lehrer, Wesley Salmon and Robert Harnish, in addition to Sellars.

Today Peffer specializes in moral, social and political philosophy, including modern theories of social justice and human rights along with contemporary Marxism and market socialism. His first book was Marxism, Morality, and Social Justice (Princeton University Press, 1990). He is nearing completion on his second book, World Justice: Economy, Ecology, and Human Rights in an International Context.