Sissela Bok, born 2 December 1934, is a Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

-born philosopher and ethicist

Ethicist

An ethicist is one whose judgment on ethics and ethical codes has come to be trusted by a specific community, and is expressed in some way that makes it possible for others to mimic or approximate that judgement...

, the daughter of two Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 winners: Gunnar Myrdal

Gunnar Myrdal

Karl Gunnar Myrdal was a Swedish Nobel Laureate economist, sociologist, and politician. In 1974, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Friedrich Hayek for "their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the...

 who won the Economics prize with Friedrich Hayek

Friedrich Hayek

Friedrich August Hayek CH , born in Austria-Hungary as Friedrich August von Hayek, was an economist and philosopher best known for his defense of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought...

 in 1974, and Alva Myrdal

Alva Myrdal

Alva Myrdal was a Swedish sociologist and politician. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982. She married Gunnar Myrdal in 1924....

 who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982.

She received her B.A. and M.A. in psychology from George Washington University

George Washington University

The George Washington University is a private, coeducational comprehensive university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States...

 in 1957 and 1958, and her Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 in 1970. Formerly a Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis University

Brandeis University

Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...

, Sissela Bok is currently a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Harvard School of Public Health

Harvard School of Public Health

The Harvard School of Public Health is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University, located in the Longwood Area of the Boston, Massachusetts neighborhood of Mission Hill, which is next to Harvard Medical School. HSPH is considered a significant school focusing on health in the...

.

Her brother, Jan Myrdal

Jan Myrdal

Jan Myrdal is a Swedish author, leftist-political writer and columnist. He is an honorary doctor of literature at Upsala College in New Jersey, USA, and a Ph.D. at Nankai University in Tianjin in China. He has lived at various times in the United States, Afghanistan, Iran and India...

 is a controversial writer and journalist. She is married to Derek Bok, former president (1971-1991) and interim president (2006-2007) of Harvard. Her daughter, Hilary Bok

Hilary Bok

Hilary Bok is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Bioethics and Moral & Political Theory at the Johns Hopkins University. Bok received a B.A. in Philosophy from Princeton University in 1981 and her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1991....

, is also a philosopher.

She was awarded the Courage of Conscience award on 24 April 1991 "for her contributions to peacemaking strategies in the tradition of her mother".

Books

• Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (Pantheon Books, 1978; Vintage paperback editions, 1979, 1989, 1999).
• Secrets: on the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation (Pantheon Books, 1982; Vintage paperback editions, 1984, 1989).
• A Strategy for Peace: Human Values and the Threat of War (Pantheon Books, 1989; Vintage paperback edition, 1990).
• Alva Myrdal: A Daughter's Memoir (Addison-Wesley, 1991; paperback edition 1992).
• Common Values (University of Missouri Press, 1995; paperback edition 2002).
• Mayhem: Violence as Public Entertainment (Perseus, 1998; paperback edition 1999).
• Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide, with Gerald Dworkin and Ray Frey (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
• Exploring Happiness: From Aristotle to Brain Science (Yale University Press, 2010).

External links

• Interview with Bill Moyers on PBS' Now (video)
• The Pursuits of Happiness - Lowell Lecture, October 2003
• Transcript of interview by David Gergen on PBS' NewsHour "Mayhem" as Entertainment" 1998
• "The Pursuits of Happiness," Alumni Bulletin, Harvard University Extension School, Vol. 37, Fall 2003, pp. 3-11.
• "Rethinking the WHO Definition of Health," Working Paper, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Vol. 14, No. 7 October [2004]
• Sissela Bok: Honesty in Public Life (Real Audio from WETS FM)