Matthieu Queloz

Institute of Philosophy, University of Bern

Welcome

I’m a Privatdozent at the University of Bern and an Ambizione Fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Before that, I spent three years at Oxford, where I was a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College and a member of the Faculty of Philosophy. As of 2027, I will hold an SNSF Professorship (Starting Grant) and lead a five-year project on artificial cognition.

I work on the origin and value of some of the most fundamental concepts that structure our thought, such as truth, knowledge, understanding, voluntariness, and liberty. I am particularly interested in how to reconcile the genealogy with the phenomenology of thought, and on what basis to evaluate and extend our ways of thinking in the face of social and technological changes. I like to address these questions by drawing together resources from theoretical and practical philosophy, and my work is also deeply informed by the history of philosophy. In 2022, I was awarded the Amerbach Prize of the University of Basel and the Lauener Prize for Up-and-Coming Philosophers.

I have organized my articles by whether they would be most of interest to someone coming from theoretical philosophy, practical philosophy, or historical philosophy. To facilitate navigation by themes, I also built a system of tags and a search bar. The full site is available in English, Français, or Deutsch. For any session chairs who might be wondering: my last name is pronounced with a silent ‘z’ [ kəˈloː ]. To contact me, you can send me an email by clicking here.

Books

Audio Overview

The Ethics of Conceptualization

Tailoring Thought and Language to Need

Oxford University Press, 2025 Open Access

Why should we accept one definition rather than another? The book develops a framework for judging concepts by the conceptual needs we uncover when we step back from them. It argues that sometimes, vague and even conflicting concepts are exactly what we need, and shows how to distinguish helpful clarification from conceptual gerrymandering.

Subject of the Bielefeld Masterclass in Philosophy 2024.

Cited as evidence before the UK Parliament (written evidence FDO0024).

“What are the grounds on which we should select the best concepts to use in representing our world and our psychology, in framing our ethical and political ideals? Queloz offers an incisive and comprehensive exploration of how this issue has been, and ought to be, answered ... a major contribution to a growing research program.” — Philip Pettit

“One of the most sophisticated and subtle book-length works … to come out within the last decade ... takes a step back and re-plots the logical terrain of its subject from a new perspective … also displays an incredible depth of knowledge across a wide variety of fields.” — Jennifer Nado

Audio Overview

The Practical Origins of Ideas

Genealogy as Conceptual Reverse-Engineering

Oxford University Press, 2021 Open Access

A study of the “state-of-nature” stories and genealogies that explain why abstract ideas arise in the first place. The book traces this practice from Hume, Rousseau, and Nietzsche to E.J. Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker, showing how genealogy can reverse‑engineer the pressures that make concepts worth having.

“Superb ... [a] splendid book” — Cheryl Misak, Analysis

“Refreshingly ambitious … delightful to read: the prose is colorful, elegant, and sharp, and Queloz has a knack for bringing high-minded ideals down to earth. I wish more philosophers wrote so well.” — Michael Hannon, Mind

“Ground-breaking" — Paul Roth, Analysis

“There is a tremendous amount to be learned from this very stimulating book” — Peter Kail, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

“Clear, impressively erudite, well-structured, sensitive to both historical and systematic questions about genealogy … an invaluable contribution” — Christos Kyriacou, Journal of Value Inquiry

Bernard Williams on Philosophy and History

Edited by Marcel van Ackeren & Matthieu Queloz

Oxford University Press, 2025

For Bernard Williams, philosophy and history are deeply connected. He argues that philosophy, unlike science, cannot ignore its own history, and that historical engagement, whether to produce history or philosophy, requires acknowledging the past's difference from the present. Furthermore, systematic philosophy itself requires a historical approach to its concepts. This volume explores these different interconnections through commissioned contributions that critically appraise Williams’s work in the history of philosophy, his historicist turn, and his use of genealogy. The collection uniquely combines substantive discussions of historical figures (from Homer to Wittgenstein) with methodological discussions of how philosophy should use and engage with history.