William Sweet
Canadian political philosopher
William Sweet (born 1955) is a Canadian philosopher, and a past president of the Canadian Philosophical Association and of the Canadian Theological Society.
Biography
Sweet was born in St. Albert near Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and studied political science, theology, and philosophy in Canada, South Africa, France, and Germany. He completed a DEA in political science at the Sorbonne at the Université de Paris (with Luc Ferry), a PhD in philosophy at the University of Ottawa, a DTh in systematic theology at the University of South Africa in Pretoria, and a D.Ph. at the Université Saint-Paul. He also studied at Carleton University, the University of Manitoba, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and the Centre Sèvres (Faculté de Théologie de la Compagnie de Jésus, Paris). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2014, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2017. In November 2021, he was elected a permanent member of the Institut international de philosophie.
Sweet specializes in political philosophy (particularly on issues of human rights); the philosophy of religion (e.g., the influence of science and technology on religion and, broadly, epistemology of religion); philosophical and systematic theology; the relation of culture and tradition to philosophical thinking (particularly, comparative Asian and Western philosophy); late 19th and early 20th century Anglo-American Philosophy (particularly, the origins of analytic philosophy and British Idealism); ethical theories and applied ethics (especially, cross-cultural ethics); and the philosophy of Jacques Maritain.
Academic positions
Sweet is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Philosophy, Theology, and Cultural Traditions at St Francis Xavier University.
The public source identifies “William Sweet” as canadian political philosopher. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around William, Sweet and Canadian.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8019006. VIAF identifies the subject as 79152444. The Library of Congress control number is n96067222. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1955, 2014, 2017 and 2021.
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This entry incorporates text from “William Sweet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.