Ph.D. (Philosophy), Stanford University, 1998
A.B., Harvard University, 1992
Gideon Yaffe is Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld Professor of Jurisprudence, Professor of Philosophy, and Professor of Psychology at Yale. His primary area of research is the philosophy of law, particularly the philosophy of criminal law. He makes progress on the study of intention and the theory of action in an effort to understand and evaluate the way in which criminal responsibility is assessed. He has also published books and articles about the history of early modern philosophy. Yaffe collaborates with several neuroscientists to devise experiments that aim to be of legal and philosophical significance and has written about the relevance of the neuroscience of addiction to the criminal culpability of addicts.
His 2010 book, “Attempts: In the Philosophy of Action and the Criminal Law,” concerns the philosophical foundations of the law governing attempted crimes. His 2018 book, “The Age of Culpability: Children and the Nature of Criminal Responsibility” explores the philosophical grounds for leniency towards child criminals.
He holds an A.B. in philosophy from Harvard and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford. He was a member of the MacArthur Foundation’s Law and Neuroscience Project and has held fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Mellon Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2026.
