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31Perfectionism and Neutrality: Essays in Liberal TheoryRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2003.Editors provide a substantive introduction to the history and theories of perfectionism and neutrality, expertly contextualizing the essays and making the collection accessible
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1Equality for InegalitariansCambridge University Press. 2014.This book offers a new and compelling account of distributive justice and its relation to choice. Unlike luck egalitarians, who treat unchosen differences in people's circumstances as sources of unjust inequality to be overcome, Sher views such differences as pervasive and unavoidable features of the human situation. Appealing to an original account of what makes us moral equals, he argues that our interest in successfully negotiating life's ever-shifting contingencies is more basic than our int…Read more
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112Who’s in Charge Here?: Reply to Neil LevyPhilosophia 36 (2): 223-226. 2008.In his response to my essay “Out of Control,” Neil Levy contests my claims that (1) we are often responsible for acts that we do not consciously choose to perform, and that (2) despite the absence of conscious choice, there remains a relevant sense in which these actions are within our control. In this reply to Levy, I concede that claim (2) is linguistically awkward but defend the thought that it expresses, and I clarify my defense of claim (1) by distinguishing my position from attributionism
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30Political PhilosophyPhilosophical Review 108 (1): 87. 1999.This book, which was completed just before Jean Hampton’s untimely death in April 1996, is an admirable hybrid. Although it successfully achieves its stated purpose of “acquaint[ing] the student of political philosophy both with [its] questions and with the various answers to them proposed by philosophers since the ancient Greeks”, it is, at the same time, quite an original work—one that can be read with real profit by professional philosophers as well as students.
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589But I Could Be WrongSocial Philosophy and Policy 18 (2): 64. 2001.My aim in this essay is to explore the implications of the fact that even our most deeply held moral beliefs have been profoundly affected by our upbringing and experience—that if any of us had had a sufficiently different upbringing and set of experiences, he almost certainly would now have a very different set of moral beliefs and very different habits of moral judgment. This fact, together with the associated proliferation of incompatible moral doctrines, is sometimes invoked in support of li…Read more
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4Approximate Justice: Studies in Social, Political, and Legal PhilosophyRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1997.In this engaging and provocative book, Sher explores the normative moral and social problems that arise from living in a decidedly non-ideal world_a world that contains immorality, evil, and injustice, and in which resources are often inadequate. Sher confronts difficult issues surrounding preferential treatment and equal opportunity, compensatory justice and punishment, the allocation of goods, and moral compromise
Houston, Texas, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |