Donald Phillip Verene (born October 24, 1937) is an American philosophy professor and author. He is the Charles Howard Chandler Professor of Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy at Emory University.
Donald Verene was born in Galesburg, Illinois. He studied at Knox College in his hometown, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1959. He earned his doctorate in philosophy at Washington University in 1964.
He is the father of the photographer Chris Verene.
Dr. Verene is a lecturing academic at Emory University. He was Editor of Philosophy and Rhetoric from 1976 to 1987. From 1982 to 1988, he was the Chair of Emory's Department of Philosophy.
Considered a worldwide authority on Giambattista Vico, he leads Emory's Center for Vico Studies. His wife, Molly Black Verene, serves as Assistant Director of the Center.
He also serves as a Visitor of Ralston College, a start-up liberal arts college in Savannah.
Verene was a Visiting Fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford in 1988. He was a Visiting Scholar at La Sapienza University of Rome in 1996. He is also a Fellow of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.
Verene is the author of Vico's Science of Imagination and Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge.