John Cottingham is an English philosopher, educated at Merchant Taylors’ School near London, and St John’s College, Oxford.

He is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Reading, Professorial Research Fellow, Heythrop College, University of London, and an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford. He was from 1993 to 2012 editor of Ratio: the International Journal of Analytic Philosophy.

Cottingham has served as a President of the Aristotelian Society, the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion, the Mind Association and as Chairman of the British Society for the History of Philosophy. A Festschrift on his work, with responses by Cottingham, The Moral Life, was published by Palgrave in 2008.