University of Oxford
Faculty of Philosophy
DPhil, 1991
Montréal, Quebec, Canada
  •  94
    Dissidents and Innocents: Hard Cases for a Political Philosophy of Boycotts
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 36 (4): 560-574. 2018.
    In this article, I distinguish boycotts from other kinds of superficially similar types of actions, and argue that boycotts involve at least coordinated activity on the part of the members of a group to abstain on moral grounds from otherwise normal interaction with the members of another group. Boycotts in their minimal forms do not face high justificatory hurdles, since they involve the exercise of freedom of speech, along with the exercise by members of the boycotting group of basic rights an…Read more
  •  83
    On Partisan Compromise
    Political Theory 47 (1): 90-96. 2019.
  •  92
    For a political philosophy of parent–child relationships
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 21 (3): 351-365. 2018.
  •  7
    À propos de The Practice of Liberal Pluralism de William Galston : un dialogue avec l’auteur
    with Roberto Merrill, Bernardo Bolagnos, Raul Magni Berton, and Geneviève Rousselière
    Les Ateliers de L’Ethique 1 (1): 112-127. 2006.
    The publication of "The Practice of Liberal Pluralism" by Willam Galston has appeared as an event of first importance regarding contemporary theory about the relation between pluralism and liberalism. William Galston’s theory has had a visible evolution: in "Liberal Purposes", the main object is a critique of neutralism and a defence of perfectionist liberalism, whereas "Liberal Pluralism" main concern was to draw the limits of state intervention. This evolution is the object of numerous questio…Read more
  •  1055
    There are at present two ways in which to evaluate religiously-based claims to accommodation in the legal context. The first, objective approach holds that these claims should be grounded in « facts of the matter » about the religions in question. The second, subjective approach, is grounded in an appreciation by the courts of the sincerity of the claimant. The first approach has the advantage of accounting for the difference between two constitutional principles : freedom of conscience on the o…Read more
  •  639
    The political ethics of health
    Les Ateliers de L’Ethique 5 (1): 105-118. 2010.
    This paper seeks to provide an overview of some of the main areas of debate that have emerged in recent years at the interface between theories of justice and health care. First, the paper consi- ders various positions as to what the index of justice with respect to health ought to be. It warns on practical and principled grounds against conceptual inflation of the notion of "health" as it appears in theories of distributive justice. Second, it considers how various standards according to which …Read more
  •  121
    Compromise, pluralism, and deliberation
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 20 (5): 636-655. 2017.
    The pluralism that marks modern, pluralist liberal democracies makes compromise an attractive goal of democratic decision-making. Compromise differs from consensus in that it is viewed as sub-optimal by all parties relative to the disagreement at hand, but preferable to the absence of agreement, as long as that which is agreed to does not require by any party the sacrifice of a fundamental value. Voting does not vitiate the need for compromise in democracies, given that all practicable electoral…Read more
  •  206
    National Partiality: Confronting the Intuitions
    The Monist 82 (3): 516-541. 1999.
    Recent defenders of nationalism have pointed to the fact that most people feel that their obligations towards their compatriots are either more numerous or more stringent than those which bind them to people from other countries. They point to this fact as evidence that something is seriously amiss with the universalism which allegedly underpins liberal theory. That people believe quite strongly that they have such special obligations is taken as a datum for which different theories of justice m…Read more
  •  120
    Prospects for Transnational Citizenship and Democracy
    Ethics and International Affairs 15 (2): 53-66. 2001.
    Many of the problems that would be faced in setting up transnational institutions mirror problems that have already been addressed by appropriate institutional mechanisms in the establishment of the modern nation-state.
  •  161
    Neutralizing Perfection: Hurka on Liberal Neutrality
    Dialogue 38 (1): 45-62. 1999.
    RÉSUMÉ: Je maintiens dans cet essai que l'argument développé par Thomas Hurka sur la base de son perfectionnisme aristotélicien en faveur d'une forme modérée de perfectionnisme d'État échoue. Je tente de démontrer que son perfectionnisme sousdétermine les types d'activités que l'État aurait à promouvoir afin de réaliser les valeurs perfectionnistes qu'il défend. Je soutiens également que Hurka opère avec une conception caricaturale de la doctrine de la neutralité libérale. Selon lui, l'État libé…Read more
  • Démocratie et délibération
    Archives de Philosophie 63 (3): 405-421. 2000.
  •  67
    Can parity of self-esteem serve as the basis of the principle of linguistic territoriality?
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 18 (2): 199-211. 2015.
  •  127
    Introduction
    Philosophiques 28 (1): 3-8. 2001.
  •  88
    The graying of Berlin (review)
    Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 11 (4): 481-501. 1997.
    In Isaiah Berlin, John Gray interprets Berlin as having made value pluralism the basis of an anti‐rationalist, “agonistic” liberalism. Gray argues that Berlin's value pluralism actually stands in tension with his liberalism, and that a whole‐hearted affirmation of value pluralism should have led him to reject the claim that liberal institutions are morally superior. But Berlin's pluralism is more moderate than that ascribed to him by Gray, in that it does not allow for diminishing the value of l…Read more
  •  120
  •  115
    Just Talk?
    Dialogue 37 (1): 107-. 1998.
    Mark Kingwell’s A Civil Tongue is a particularly striking example of this recent trend. Kingwell argues that, for diverse societies, justice reduces to vigorous public debate governed by the conversational virtue of civility, or politeness. According to Kingwell, “Whatever passes through a set of conversational constraints can be expected to be the valid norms or principles of justice”.
  •  8
  •  134
    Building trust in divided societies
    Journal of Political Philosophy 7 (3). 1999.
  •  99
    The real world of (global) democracy
    Journal of Social Philosophy 37 (1). 2006.
  •  76
    Introduction
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 6 (1): 1-4. 2003.
  •  3
    The Antinomy of Language Rights
    In Will Kymlicka & Alan Patten (eds.), Language Rights and Political Theory, Oxford University Press. 2003.
  •  95
    Making Sense of Mill
    Dialogue 35 (4): 791-804. 1996.
    Wendy Donner'sThe Liberal Self: John Stuart Mill's Moral and Political Philosophyis an important and thought-provoking addition to the growing body of literature seeking to rescue Mill's practical philosophy from the rather lowly place it occupied in the estimation of many philosophers earlier this century, and to present him as a philosopher whose views form a coherent, systematic whole that can still contribute significantly to numerous moral and political debates. The book proposes an interpr…Read more
  •  70
    There is an underappreciated disconnect between the ultimate values that lie at the heart of contemporary theories of distributive justice, and the practice of state institutions. State institutions deliver “intermediate goods” – goods such as health-care, education, housing, transportation, and the like – that are instrumental to a society being distributively just, but that do not in an of themselves constitute criteria of justice. Researchers who have emphasized the “social determinants of he…Read more
  •  146
    Constitutionalizing the right to secede
    Journal of Political Philosophy 9 (2). 2001.
  •  74
    The Justification of Political Liberalism
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 75 (3-4): 165-185. 1994.
    I outline Rawls's theory of justification, highlighting its philosophical and pragmatic conditions. I argue that the theory has remained essentially unchanged since his earliest methodological writings, and that his recent writings have sought to show how "justice as fairness" can satisfy these conditions, given Rawls's new construal of the "fact of pluralism" which theories of justice designed for modern Western liberal democracies must address. I argue that neither Rawls's revised conception o…Read more