Todd Gifford May^[1][2] (born May 13, 1955) is a political philosopher who writes on topics of anarchism, poststructuralism, and post-structuralist anarchism. More recently he has published books on existentialism and moral philosophy.

In 1989, May received a doctorate at Pennsylvania State University in continental philosophy.^{[3][dead link‍]} For the first part of his career, he focused on French philosophy, before turning to moral and political philosophy.^{[citation needed]} May has been teaching moral and political philosophy for over thirty years, beginning as a graduate instructor at Penn State before becoming a visiting assistant professor at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania.^[1][2] May taught at Clemson from 1991 to 2022, where he served as the Class of 1941 Memorial Professor of Philosophy.^[4][2] Since 2022, he has been a lecturer in philosophy at Warren Wilson College.^[5][2] May also teaches philosophy to incarcerated people.^[6]

Art academic Allan Antliff described May's 1994 The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism as "seminal,” and he credited the book with introducing "post-structuralist anarchism,” later abbreviated as "post-anarchism.”^[7] May has published works on major poststructuralist philosophers, including Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault.^[8][9] He also wrote books on more general topics accessible to the general reader, including Death,^[10] Our Practices, Our Selves, or, What It Means to Be Human,^[11] Friendship in an Age of Economics: Resisting the Forces of Neoliberalism,^[12] A Significant Life: Human Meaning in a Silent Universe,^[13] A Fragile Life: Accepting Our Vulnerability.^[14]

May, along with Pamela Hieronymi, was a philosophical advisor to the NBC television show The Good Place.^[15] They both had cameos in the final episode.^[16]

May has three children, the youngest of whom majored in philosophy at university.^[6]

• Between Genealogy and Epistemology (1993). University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 978-0-271-00905-6.
• The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism (1994). University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 978-0-271-01046-5.^[17]
• Reconsidering Difference (1997). University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 978-0-271-01658-0.
• Our Practices, Our Selves, or, What It Means to Be Human (2001). University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 978-0-271-02086-0.
• Operation Defensive Shield (2003). Sydney: Pluto Press. ISBN 978-0-7453-2063-2. Written in collaboration with Muna Hamzeh.
• The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism (2004). University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 978-0-271-02585-8.
• Gilles Deleuze (2005). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-84309-6.
• Philosophy of Foucault (2006). Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 978-0-7735-3169-7.
• The Political Thought of Jacques Ranciere: Creating Equality (2008). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-3586-3.
• Death (2008). Acumen Publishing. ISBN 1-84465-164-9.
• Friendship in an Age of Economics: Resisting the Forces of Neoliberalism (2014). New York: Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0-739-19284-9.
• A Significant Life: Human Meaning in a Silent Universe (2015). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-23567-7.
• Nonviolent Resistance: A Philosophical Introduction (2015). Cambridge: Polity Books. ISBN 978-0-745-67118-5.
• A Fragile Life: Accepting Our Vulnerability (2017). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-43995-2.
• A Decent Life: Morality for the Rest of Us (2019). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-60974-4.
• Exploring the Philosophy of Death and Dying: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives, Chapter 21: Death, Mortality, and Meaning (December 31, 2020, 1st Edition). Publisher: Routledge.
• Should We Go Extinct?: A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Unbearable Times (2024). New York, Crown Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-593-79872-0.