-
32Review of A. John Simmons: Moral Principles and Political Obligations (review)Ethics 91 (2): 309-312. 1981.
-
41Review of A. John Simmons: On the Edge of Anarchy: Locke, Consent, and the Limits of Society (review)Ethics 106 (1): 197-199. 1995.
-
162Locke on the Death PenaltyPhilosophy 69 (270): 471-. 1994.Brian Calvert has offered us a clear and careful analysis of Locke's views on punishment and capital punishment. The primary goal of his paper - that of correcting the misperception of Locke as a wholehearted proponent of capital punishment for a wide range of offenses - must be allowed to be both laudable and largely achieved in his discussion. But Calvert's analysis also encourages, I think, a number of serious misunderstandings of Locke's true position
-
Disobedience, Nonideal Theory, and Historical IllegitimacyIn Alan John Simmons (ed.), Boundaries of Authority, Oxford University Press Usa. 2016.Chapter 2 examines the justified aims or objects of legal disobedience. It begins with the famous theory of civil disobedience defended by John Rawls. This is contrasted with the approach taken by Henry David Thoreau. The chapter argues that Thoreau’s view permits, where Rawls’s theory is unable to allow, disobedience due to the historically illegitimate subjection of lands and peoples. The Kantian or Rawlsian approach to disobedience is unable to move beyond structural injustice as the justifie…Read more
-
IntroductionIn Alan John Simmons (ed.), Boundaries of Authority, Oxford University Press Usa. 2016.phipolPolitical PhilosophyStates are defined in international law as entities with permanent populations and fixed territories under government control.1 Henry Sidgwick, anticipating such definitions, was surely correct when he wrote that “it seems essential to the modern conception of a State that its government should exercise supreme dominion over a particular portion of the earth’s surface … Indeed, in modern political thought the connection between a political society and its territory is s…Read more
-
Alternative ApproachesIn Alan John Simmons (ed.), Boundaries of Authority, Oxford University Press Usa. 2016.Chapter 6 examines hybrid or pluralist theories of territorial rights—that is, theories that are not “pure” uses of the strategies considered in chapter 4. It considers first an attempt to hybridize the kind of Kantian functionalism discussed in chapter 3. Stilz’s theory is rejected for being only selectively pluralistic in what appears to be an ad hoc fashion. Chapter 6 also argues that Meisels’s nationalist hybrid, while in fact committed to taking seriously historical wrongs and their lasting…Read more
-
BordersIn Alan John Simmons (ed.), Boundaries of Authority, Oxford University Press Usa. 2016.Chapter 9 examines another kind of property-like right claimed by modern states: the right to control movement across state borders. The chapter discusses the connections between the idea of national self-determination and states’ border rights. Recent arguments for open borders employing both the arbitrariness of nationality and rights of free movement are critiqued. Appeals by functionalists to states’ rights to self-determination as a justification for a robust right to exclude aliens are rej…Read more
-
A Lockean Voluntarist AccountIn Alan John Simmons (ed.), Boundaries of Authority, Oxford University Press Usa. 2016.Chapter 5 defends a Lockean theory of territory, arguing that it avoids the unpalatable commitments of its rivals. The chapter first outlines Locke’s own view, which derives states’ territorial rights from its willing members’ private rights over land and resources. It then describes the ways in which that historical position needs to be modified to make it defensible, taking the ideal it describes to be its strong point. The chapter also describes and answers the standard objections to this sor…Read more
-
19An 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
-
AuthorityIn Alan John Simmons (ed.), Boundaries of Authority, Oxford University Press Usa. 2016.Chapter 1 explores the concept of authority. It distinguishes practical from epistemic authority and the varieties of practical authority. Epistemic authority has been characterized as “giving reasons for belief, not action.” Exercises of practical authority give reasons to act. The views of Hobbes, Locke, and Raz receive focused attention. The chapter identifies and discusses the chief philosophical approaches to the idea of political authority. It also explains the connections between politica…Read more
-
30Consent and Fairness in Planning Land UseBusiness and Professional Ethics Journal 6 (2): 5-19. 1987.
-
193An 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
-
314
-
25Democracy’s Discontent (review)Philosophical Review 107 (1): 133-135. 1998.As its subtitle indicates, Democracy’s Discontent is a study of the political philosophies that have guided America’s public life. The “search” Michael Sandel describes has, in his view, temporarily come to a disappointing resolution in America’s acceptance of a liberal “public philosophy” that “cannot secure the liberty it promises” and has left Americans “discontented” with their “loss of self-government and the erosion of community”. This theme is unlikely to surprise readers familiar with Sa…Read more
-
49Reasonable expectations and obligations: A reply to PostowSouthern Journal of Philosophy 19 (1): 123-127. 1981.
-
24Punishment: A Philosophy and Public Affairs Reader (edited book)Princeton University Press. 1994.The problem of justifying legal punishment has been at the heart of legal and social philosophy from the very earliest recorded philosophical texts. However, despite several hundred years of debate, philosophers have not reached agreement about how legal punishment can be morally justified. That is the central issue addressed by the contributors to this volume. All of the essays collected here have been published in the highly respected journal Philosophy & Public Affairs. Taken together, they o…Read more
-
2Moral Principles and Political ObligationsRevue de Métaphysique et de Morale 87 (4): 568-568. 1980.
-
83Historical rights and fair sharesLaw and Philosophy 14 (2). 1995.My aim of this paper is to clarify, and in a certain very limited way to defend, historical theories of property rights (and their associated theories of social or distributive justice). It is important, I think, to better understand historical rights for several reasons: first, because of the extent to which historical theories capture commonsense, unphilosophical views about property and justice; then, because historical theories have fallen out of philosophical fashion, and are consequently n…Read more
-
197Consent theory for libertariansSocial Philosophy and Policy 22 (1): 330-356. 2005.This paper argues that libertarian political philosophers, including Robert Nozick, have erred in neglecting the problem of political obligation and that they ought to embrace an actual consent theory of political obligation and state legitimacy. It argues as well that if they followed this recommendation, their position on the subject would be correct. I identify the tension in libertarian (and especially Nozick's) thought between its minimalist and its consensualist strains and argue that, on …Read more
-
63Political philosophyOxford University Press. 2008.The most recent addition to the Fundamentals of Philosophy Series, Political Philosophy is a concise yet thorough and highly engaging introduction to the essential problems of the discipline. Organized topically and presented in a straightforward manner by an eminent political philosopher, A. John Simmons, it investigates the nature and basis of political authority and the structure and organization of political life. Each chapter focuses on a central problem, considers how it could be addressed…Read more
-
281On the Territorial Rights of StatesNoûs 35 (s1): 300-326. 2001.When officials of some political society portray their state as legitimate - and when do they not! - they intend to be laying claim to a large body of rights, the rights in which their state's legitimacy allegedly consists. The rights claimed are minimally those that states must exercise if they are to retain effective control over their territories and populations in a world composed of numerous autonomous states. Often the rights states are trying to claim in asserting their legitimacy go far …Read more
-
3Justification and Legitimacy: Essays on Rights and ObligationsLaw and Philosophy 22 (2): 195-216. 2003.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
-
28Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public PhilosophyPhilosophical Review 107 (1): 133. 1998.As its subtitle indicates, Democracy’s Discontent is a study of the political philosophies that have guided America’s public life. The “search” Michael Sandel describes has, in his view, temporarily come to a disappointing resolution in America’s acceptance of a liberal “public philosophy” that “cannot secure the liberty it promises” and has left Americans “discontented” with their “loss of self-government and the erosion of community”. This theme is unlikely to surprise readers familiar with Sa…Read more
-
18Reasonable Expectations and Obligations: A Reply to PostowSouthern Journal of Philosophy 19 (1): 123-127. 1981.
-
208Associative 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
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 |