Robert Maximilian de Gaynesford (born 2 January 1968) is an English philosopher.

Shortly before receiving his doctorate, he was elected fellow and tutor in philosophy at Lincoln College, Oxford (1997).

He was subsequently Humboldt Research Fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin (2003) and a tenured professor at The College of William and Mary in Virginia (2002–2006)[2] before becoming professor of philosophy (2008) and head of department (2016) at the University of Reading.

[3] He is the author of four books: The Rift in the Lute: Attuning Poetry and Philosophy (Oxford, 2017), I: The Meaning of the First Person Term (Oxford, 2006), Hilary Putnam (Routledge, 2006; the book's goal was "to make Putnam’s contributions to modern philosophy accessible to those without expertise in such matters"[4]), and John McDowell (Polity, 2004).

[7] He is also interested in moral psychology and the interface with the philosophy of law, where he unearths a particular type of defence that he calls 'justifexcuses.