-
109Pufendorf on Morality, Sociability, and Moral PowersJournal of the History of Philosophy 50 (2): 213-238. 2012.Only in the last twenty-five years have scholars begun to appreciate Samuel Pufendorf’s importance for the history of ethics. The signal element of Pufendorf’s ethics for recent commentators is his idea that morality arises when God imposes his superior will on a world that can contain no moral value of or on its own. But how, exactly, is “imposition” accomplished? According to Pufendorf, human beings do not simply defer to God in the way elephant seals do to a dominant male. Rather, imposition …Read more
-
23The Authority of ReasonPhilosophical Review 109 (4): 583. 2000.At the time of her death in 1996, Jean Hampton was working on a book on practical reason she had tentatively titled, A Theory of Reasons. The above volume consists of the materials she left, together with useful editorial clues to the state of their relative completeness. Computer file dates make it clear that Hampton was engaged in a significant revision of the text and had gotten as far as Chapter 3 of a nine-chapter book. Revisions of two-thirds of the text lay before her, and, as Richard Hea…Read more
-
58How should ethics relate to (the rest of) philosophy? : Moore's legacySouthern Journal of Philosophy 41 (S1): 1-20. 2003.
-
9Normativity and Projection in Hobbes’s LeviathanPhilosophical Review 109 (3): 313-347. 2000.A perennial problem in interpreting Hobbes’s moral and political thought in Leviathan has been to square the apparently irreducible normativity of central Hobbesian concepts and premises with his materialism and empiricism. Thus, Hobbes defines a “law of nature” as a “precept or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life” and the “right of nature” as “the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preser…Read more
-
130Self-Interest and Self-ConcernSocial Philosophy and Policy 14 (1): 158. 1997.In what follows I consider whether the idea of a person's interest or good might be better understood through that of care or concern for that person for her sake, rather than conversely, as is ordinarily assumed. Contrary to desire-satisfaction theories of interest, such an account can explain why not everything a person rationally desires is part of her good, since what a person sensibly wants is not necessarily what we would sensibly want, insofar as we care about her. First, however, a tale:…Read more
-
93Grotius at the Creation of Modern Moral PhilosophyArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 94 (3): 296-325. 2012.
-
126Reply to Griffin, Raz, and wolfUtilitas 18 (4): 434-444. 2006.I am honored that Jim Griffin, Joseph Raz, and Susan Wolf, all of whose work I greatly admire, have thought my ideas on welfare and care worth engaging, and I am very grateful to them for doing so. Each has raised searching and difficult questions. Rather than attempting to respond to them seriatim, I propose to discuss the issues under three broad headings: questions about the concept of welfare, questions about care or sympathetic concern, and the question of whether welfare claims have agent-…Read more
-
62Equal Freedom: selected Tanner lectures on human valuesUniversity of Michigan Press. 1995.Issues at the major fault-line of political beliefs and debates.
-
15William Klaas Frankena 1908-1994Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 68 (5). 1995.
-
9Moral Discourse and Practice: Some Philosophical Approaches (edited book)Oxford University Press USA. 1996.What are ethical judgments about? And what is their relation to practice? How can ethical judgment aspire to objectivity? The past two decades have witnessed a resurgence of interest in metaethics, placing questions such as these about the nature and status of ethical judgment at the very center of contemporary moral philosophy. Moral Discourse and Practice: Some Philosophical Approaches is a unique anthology which collects important recent work, much of which is not easily available elsewhere, …Read more
-
22Review: From Morality to Virtue and Back? (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (3). 1994.
-
11Conrad Johnson 1943-1992Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 66 (5). 1993.
-
149The Second-Person Standpoint An Interview with Stephen DarwallThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 16 (1): 118-138. 2009.
-
29Morality, Authority, and Law: Essays in Second-Personal Ethics IOxford University Press. 2013.Stephen Darwall presents a series of essays that explore the view that morality is second-personal, entailing mutual accountability and the authority to address demands. He illustrates the power of the second-personal framework to illuminate a wide variety of issues in moral, political, and legal philosophy
-
40Comment on Stephen Darwall's The Second Person StandpointPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (1): 246-252. 2010.
-
145Agent-centered restrictions from the inside outPhilosophical Studies 50 (3). 1986.Peer Reviewed.
-
Intuitionism and the Motivation ProblemIn Philip Stratton-Lake (ed.), Ethical Intuitionism: Re-Evaluations, Clarendon Press. 2002.
New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |
History of Western Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Value Theory |
History of Western Philosophy |