Dr. Nancy Sherman is a distinguished educator and renowned philosopher. She is currently a Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University and is the inaugural holder of the visiting Distinguished Chair of Ethics at the United States Naval Academy. Prior to her arrival at Georgetown, she taught at Yale University as an Associate Professor and held visiting positions at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University. Additionally, she is a fellow of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics.

Dr. Sherman holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University. She graduated magna cum laude from Bryn Mawr College with honors in Philosophy in 1973 and received her M. Litt. in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh in 1976. Dr. Sherman is the recipient of numerous scholarly awards, among which include NEH, Mellon, and ACLS Fellowships, and she appears in the Who's Who of American Women.

She has authored Making a Necessity of Virtue (Cambridge University, 1997) and The Fabric of Character (Oxford University Press, 1989) and is currently working on a book provisionally titled Eros in the Flourishing Life, which concerns the role of emotions and in particular, attachment emotions, in the good life.  Among her recent articles is "Empathy, Respect, and Humanitarian Intervention," forthcoming in Ethics and International Affairs.

Making a Necessity of Virtue is the first book to offer a detailed analysis of Aristotelian and Kantian ethics together in a way that remains faithful to the original texts and is responsive to debates in contemporary ethics. Recent moral philosophy has seen a revival of interest in the concept of virtue, and with it a reassessment of the role of virtue in the work of Aristotle and Kant. This book brings that reassessment to a new level of sophistication. Dr. Sherman argues that Kant preserves a notion of virtue in his moral theory that bears recognizable traces of the Aristotelian and Stoic traditions, and that his complex anthropology of morals brings him into surprising alliance with Aristotle.

She has argued for the significant role emotions play in both the Kantian and the Aristotelian accounts of moral agency. Most traditional accounts of Aristotle's theory of ethical education neglect its cognitive aspects. There is a resurgence of interest in Aristotle's ethical theory, and The Fabric of Character contributes to the debate by asserting that, in Aristotle's view, excellence of character is constituted both by the sentiments and by practical reason. In particular, Dr. Sherman considers four aspects of practical reason as they relate to character: moral perception, choicemaking, collaboration, and the development of those capacities in moral education. Throughout her arguments, she has maintained sensitivity to contemporary moral debates, and has indicated the extent to which Aristotle's account of practical reason provides an alternative to theories of impartial reason.