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18An Essay on the Modern StatePhilosophical Review 109 (2): 271. 2000.Contemporary political philosophers routinely assume that some form of the modern, territorial state must be justified and that in a justified state most of the claims that modern states make will be vindicated. The principal question for them is what form the state must take in order to achieve this justification. How minimal or extensive must the state be, how responsive to groups within its territories and to people without must it be, and so on. Christopher Morris’s An Essay on the Modern St…Read more
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30Consent and Fairness in Planning Land UseBusiness and Professional Ethics Journal 6 (2): 5-19. 1987.
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190An essay on the modern statePhilosophical Review 109 (2): 271-273. 2000.This important book is the first serious philosophical examination of the modern state. It inquires into the justification of this particular form of political society. It asks whether all states are "nation-states," what are the alternative ways of organizing society, and which conditions make a state legitimate. The author concludes that, while states can be legitimate, they typically fail to have the powers (e.g., sovereignty) they claim. Many books analyze government and its functions, but n…Read more
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18Reasonable Expectations and Obligations: A Reply to PostowSouthern Journal of Philosophy 19 (1): 123-127. 1981.
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202Associative political obligationsEthics 106 (2): 247-273. 1996.It is claimed by philosophers as diverse as Burke, Walzer, Dworkin, and MacIntyre that our political obligations are best understood as "associative" or "communal" obligations--that is, as obligations that require neither voluntary undertaking nor justification by "external" moral principles, but rather as "local" moral responsibilities whose normative weight derives entirely from their assignment by social practice. This paper identifies three primary lines of argument that appear to support su…Read more
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6Part 2. consent and governmentIn On the Edge of Anarchy: Locke, Consent, and the Limits of Society, Princeton University Press. pp. 57-98. 1995.
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355Moral Principles and Political ObligationsPrinceton University Press. 1979.Every political theorist will need this book . . . . It is more 'important' than 90% of the work published in philosophy."--Joel Feinberg, University of Arizona.
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51The Limits of Lockean Rights in Property (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (4): 997-999. 1998.
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146“Denisons” and “Aliens”: Locke's Problem of Political ConsentSocial Theory and Practice 24 (2): 161-182. 1998.Locke appears to be committed to the peculiar views that native-born residents and visiting aliens have the same political status (since both are tacit consenters) and that real political societies have very few "members" with full rights and duties (since only express consenters seem to be counted as "members"). Locke, however, also subscribes to a principle governing our understanding of the content of vague or inexplicit consent: such consent is consent to all and only that which is necessary…Read more
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3Part 3. the limits of societyIn On the Edge of Anarchy: Locke, Consent, and the Limits of Society, Princeton University Press. pp. 99-192. 1995.
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6Justification and Legitimacy: Essays on Rights and Obligations (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2000.A. John Simmons is widely regarded as one of the most innovative and creative of today's political philosophers. His work on political obligation is regarded as definitive and he is also internationally respected as an interpreter of John Locke. The characteristic features of clear argumentation and careful scholarship that have been hallmarks of his philosophy are everywhere evident in this collection. The essays focus on the problems of political obligation and state legitimacy as well as on h…Read more
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223Is There a Duty to Obey the Law?Cambridge University Press. 2005.The central question in political philosophy is whether political states have the right to coerce their constituents and whether citizens have a moral duty to obey the commands of their state. In this 2005 book, Christopher Heath Wellman and A. John Simmons defend opposing answers to this question. Wellman bases his argument on samaritan obligations to perform easy rescues, arguing that each of us has a moral duty to obey the law as his or her fair share of the communal samaritan chore of rescui…Read more
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123External justifications and institutional rolesJournal of Philosophy 93 (1): 28-36. 1996.In his paper "Role Obligations," Michael Hardimon defends an account of the nature and justification of institutional obligations that he takes to be clearly superior to the "standard" voluntarist view. Hardimon argues that this standard view presents a "misleading and distorted" picture of role obligations (and of morality generally); and in its best form he claims this view still "leaves out" of its understanding of even contractual role obligations an "absolutely vital factor". I argue agains…Read more
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12Part 4. consent and the edge of anarchyIn On the Edge of Anarchy: Locke, Consent, and the Limits of Society, Princeton University Press. pp. 193-270. 1995.
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95Makers' rightsThe Journal of Ethics 2 (3): 197-218. 1998.This paper examines the thesis that human labor creates property rights in or from previously unowned objects by virtue of labor's power to make new things. This thesis is considered for two possible roles: first, as a thesis to which John Locke might have been committed in his writings on property; and second, as a thesis of independent plausibility that could serve as part of a defensible contemporary theory of property rights. Understanding Locke as committed to the thesis of makers' rights h…Read more
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70The Lockean Theory of RightsPrinceton University Press. 2020.John Locke's political theory has been the subject of many detailed treatments by philosophers and political scientists. But The Lockean Theory of Rights is the first systematic, full-length study of Locke's theory of rights and of its potential for making genuine contributions to contemporary debates about rights and their place in political philosophy. Given that the rights of persons are the central moral concept at work in Locke's and Lockean political philosophy, such a study is long overdu…Read more
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139Democratic Authority and the Boundary ProblemRatio Juris 26 (3): 326-357. 2013.Theories of political authority divide naturally into those that locate the source of states' authority in the history of states' interactions with their subjects and those that locate it in structural (or functional) features of states (such as the justice of their basic institutions). This paper argues that purely structuralist theories of political authority (such as those defended by Kant, Rawls, and contemporary “democratic Kantians”) must fail because of their inability to solve the bounda…Read more
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52On the Edge of Anarchy: Locke, Consent, and the Limits of SocietyPhilosophical Review 106 (1): 139. 1997.In On the Edge of Anarchy, A. John Simmons simultaneously pursues two distinguishable ends: to defend an interpretation of Locke as a “pure consent” theorist the essence of whose theory is that only actual voluntary individual consent can ground political obligations and authority, and to defend pure consent theory as the best theory of political obligation. Both ends are pursued under the heading of justifying “Lockean” consent theory, and the arguments for them overlap considerably because mos…Read more
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512Philosophical anarchismIn Social Science Research Network, Cambridge University Press. 2001.Anarchist political philosophers normally include in their theories (or implicitly rely upon) a vision of a social life very different than the life experienced by most persons today. Theirs is a vision of autonomous, noncoercive, productive interaction among equals, liberated from and without need for distinctively political institutions, such as formal legal systems or governments or the state. This "positive" part of anarchist theories, this vision of the good social life, will be discussed o…Read more
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250The anarchist position: A reply to Klosko and SenorPhilosophy and Public Affairs 16 (3): 269-279. 1987.
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40Boundaries of AuthorityOxford University Press USA. 2016.Modern states claim rights of jurisdiction and control over particular geographical areas and their associated natural resources. Boundaries of Authority explores the possible moral bases for such territorial claims by states, in the process arguing that many of these territorial claims in fact lack any moral justification. The book maintains throughout that the requirement of states' justified authority over persons has normative priority over, and as a result severely restricts, the kinds of t…Read more
Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Law |
Value Theory |
Areas of Interest
History of Western Philosophy |