Nicholas Capaldi is a professor emeritus and the Legendre-Soulé Chair in Business Ethics at Loyola University New Orleans.

He has also served as visiting professor at institutions including the National University of Singapore and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

[5] Commentators have said of his work that it often brings “evolutionary account[s] into the twentieth century, exploring the ebbs and flows of the narratives beginning with the Progressive Era in the U.S.”[6] He has also championed Hume as a revolutionary philosophical figure in the anglophone tradition.

[7] John Gray said of Capaldi's work in the area that it was “the best account so far of Hume’s moral theory, and a contribution to Hume scholarship that will not soon or easily be matched.” [8] As regards his work on John Stuart Mill, his writing was described as filling in gaps in the history of his life, and his interaction with other figures of his day.

[9] The book has been described as supplying “rich information about Mill’s life but is also outstandingly comprehensive in recognizing the full range of his thought and in revealing the interconnection among his works”.