He grew up in Mosman, New South Wales, where his father's puppetry collection and workshop were located in the basement beneath the family residence.[8][9]
Marriage
He married the artist Parveen Kaur Seehra in 1990.[10]
In the four years (1977 to 1980) that he studied at the University of Sydney, Hetherington not only operated marionettes part-time in his father's special, highly successful dental health programme for children ("Smiley's Good Teeth Puppet Theatre"),[13] but also spoke to the children before and after each show. His part in this programme ceased when left Australia, and went to Oxford to continue his studies.
Author
His first four publications were written while he was still a student; the first two (Hetherington, 1983a; 1984a), written as an undergraduate student, were derived from papers written for his Honours-year coursework at the University of Sydney,[10] and the other two (Hetherington, 1984b; 1988) were written as a post-graduate student during his time at the University of Pittsburgh.[10]
He became a well-respected prolific author in a wide range of philosophical domains, especially epistemology:
Stephen Hetherington is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales whose key research interests are in epistemology and metaphysics. With several monographs and edited collections and more than 100 articles, he has earned an international reputation for his revivification of epistemology. He has also produced several lively works introducing students to the history and current frontiers of epistemology, which have been translated into a number of languages and have been used for teaching in widely dispersed countries — the secret of their success lies partly in the way he includes his own original research, in enlivening the exposition of traditional debates. (The Australian Academy of the Humanities.)[14]
Academic
He commenced his academic career in 1987, as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at West Virginia University;[10] and in 1990 he transferred to the philosophy department of the University of New South Wales where he remained until his retirement in late 2020.[10]
Editor-in-chief
From December 2013 until March 2022 he was the editor-in-chief of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy, a prestigious English-language philosophy journal continuously published since 1923.[3]
Candlish, Stewart (2022), "The First Hundred Years of (The) Australasian Journal of Philosophy", Vol.100, No.1, (2022), pp. 3-24. doi:10.1080/00048402.2020.1871385
Hetherington, S.C. (1983a), "Tooley's Theory of Laws of Nature", Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol.13, No.1, (January 1983), pp. 101–106. doi:10.1080/00455091.1983.10715835
Hetherington, S.C. (1983b), Epistemic Foundationalism, B.Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford. SOLO catalogue entry
Hetherington, S.C. (1984a), "Parsons and Possible Objects", Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol.62, No.3, (September 1984), pp. 246–254. doi:10.1080/00048408412340033
Hetherington, S.C. (1984b), "A Note on Inherence", Ancient Philosophy, Vol.4, No.2, (October 1984), pp. 218–223. doi:10.5840/ancientphil1984427
Hetherington, S.C. (1987), Narcissistic Epistemology, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh. PittCat catalogue entry
Hetherington, S.C. (1988), "More on Possible Objects", Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol.66, No.1, (March 1988), pp. 96–100. doi:10.1080/00048408812350271
Hetherington, Stephen (2022), "AJP—100", Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol.100, No.1, (2022), pp. 1-2. doi:10.1080/00048402.2021.2018672