Margaret Gilbert is a philosopher best known for her work in the philosophy of social science, and, more specifically, for her founding contributions to the analytic philosophy of social phenomena. She was born in the United Kingdom and obtained a B. A. degree in Classics and Philosophy from Cambridge University and a B. Phil. and D. Phil. degree in Philosophy from Oxford University. From 1983 until 2006, she taught at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, where she was Professor of Philosophy. As of Fall 2006, she holds the Abraham I. Melden Chair in Moral Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine. She has been a visiting teacher and researcher at many academic institutions including Princeton University, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, Indiana University, Wolfson College, Oxford, Technische Universität Dresden, King's College London, and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences.

Gilbert's books include On Social Facts (1989), Living Together: Rationality, Sociality, and Obligation (1996), Sociality and Responsibility: New Essays in Plural Subject Theory (2000), Marcher Ensemble: Essais sur les Fondations de la Vie Collective (2003), and A Theory of Political Obligation: Membership, Commitment, and the Bonds of Society (2006).

In On Social Facts she presented novel accounts of a number of central social phenomena in the context of critical reflections on proposals by the founders of sociology Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel, and Max Weber and others, including the philosopher David Lewis. The phenomena discussed include social conventions, social groups in a central sense of the term, group languages, collective belief, and acting together. Gilbert argued that these were all 'plural subject phenomena'. In a summary passage she writes, with allusion to Rousseau, that "One is willing to be the member of a plural subject if one is willing, at least in relation to certain conditions, to put one's own will into a 'pool of wills' dedicated, as one, to a single goal (or whatever it is that the pool is dedicated to)" (18). If two or more people have openly expressed such willingness in relation to a particular goal, in conditions of common knowledge, then the pertinent pool of wills is set up. In other words, the people concerned constitute the plural subject of the goal. As an alternative to talking of a pool of wills Gilbert refers also to joint commitment as when she writes: " the wills of the parties are jointly committed" (198). In later work she has preferred the language of joint commitment. Gilbert compares the plural subject to the singular subject and argues, with allusion to Durkheim, that "In order for individual human beings to form collectivities, they must take on a special character, a 'new' character, insofar as they need not, qua human beings, have that character. Moreover, humans must form a whole or unit of a special kind...a plural subject" (431).

In subsequent writings Gilbert has continued the development and application of her plural subject theory. Topics she has addressed include political obligation, collective moral responsibility, agreements and promises, collective emotions, and shared values. She has presented accounts of all of these in terms of joint commitment.

She was married to noted philosopher Saul Kripke and is the sister of famed British historian Sir Martin Gilbert.

References

Margaret Gilbert. On Social Facts. London, New York: Routledge, 1989.