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32Was bedeutet es, "Märkte einzubetten"? Eine TaxonomieZeitschrift für Praktische Philosophie 3 (1): 13-52. 2016.Der Aufsatz untersucht, was mit der Metapher von der moralischen "Einbettung" von Märkten gemeint ist. Zunächst werden verschiedene Formen der deskriptiven Einbettung - soziologisch, rechtlich, und institutionell - unerschieden, was zu der These führt, dass kein Markt in einem deskriptiven Sinn „uneingebettet“ ist, und dass die Frage nach Einbettung nicht alleine durch die Betrachtung von Märkten beantwortet werden kann, sondern eine breitere institutionelle Analyse erfordert. Anschließend wird …Read more
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32Just Wages in Which Markets?Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 11 (2): 105-123. 2018.Joseph Heath argues that we should reject the idea of a ‘just wage’ because market prices are supposed to signal scarcities and thereby to promote overall efficiency, rather than reward contributions. This argument overlooks the degree to which markets are institutionally, socially, and culturally embedded. Their outcomes are hardly ever ‘pure’ market outcomes, but the result of complex interactions of economic and other factors, including various forms of power. Instead of rejecting moral intui…Read more
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29Corporate knowledge and corporate power. Reining in the power of corporations as epistemic agentsCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 27 (3): 363-382. 2024.In this paper I discuss the power of corporations as epistemic agents. Corporations need to hold certain forms of knowledge in order to develop and produce goods and services. Intellectual property is meant to incentivize them to do so, in ways that orient their activities towards the public good. However, corporations often use their knowledge strategically, not only within markets, but also in the processes that set the rules for markets. I discuss various historical examples, including the so…Read more
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29Alan Thomas, Republic of Equals: Predistribution and Property-Owning DemocracyEthics 129 (3): 497-501. 2019.
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27Global reserve currencies from the perspective of structural global justice: distribution and dominationCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 24 (7): 931-953. 2021.This paper discusses global reserve currencies from the perspective of structural global justice. Drawing on notions of structural justice and background justice, it suggests that the structures of global finance, by creating positions of privilege and disadvantage, can lead to injustices both with regard to distributive outcomes and with regard to domination. While the role of the dollar and Euro as global reserve currencies are not the only factors that contribute to these structural injustice…Read more
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27Lying, Misleading, and the Argument from Cultural SlopesRes Publica 27 (1): 77-93. 2020.This paper discusses a novel kind of argument for assessing the moral significance of acts of lying and misleading. It is based on considerations about valuable social norms that might be eroded by these actions, because these actions function as signals. Given that social norms can play an important role in supporting morality, individuals have a responsibility to preserve such norms and to prevent ‘cultural slopes’ that erode them. Depending on whether there are norms against lying, misleading…Read more
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25Just Financial Markets?: Finance in a Just Society (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2017.This volume brings together leading scholars from political theory, law, and economics in order to discuss the relationship between financial markets and justice, and invites us to rethink the place and role of financial markets in our societies.
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24III—Sympathy, Empathy, and Twitter: Reflections on Social Media Inspired by an Eighteenth-Century DebateProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 123 (1): 51-72. 2023.How can the harm caused by waves of fake news or derogatory speech on social media be minimized without unduly limiting freedom of expression? I draw on an eighteenth-century debate for thinking about this problem: Hume and Smith present two different models of the transmission of emotions and ideas. Empathetic processes are causal, almost automatic processes; sympathy, in contrast, means putting oneself into the other person’s position and critically evaluating how one should react. I use this …Read more
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23Global reserve currencies from the perspective of structural global justice: distribution and dominationCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 24 (7): 931-953. 2021.
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23Persönliches Vertrauen, Rechtsvertrauen, SystemvertrauenDeutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 61 (4): 529-548. 2013.This essay analyses the role of different forms of trust in the context of financial markets. It argues that rather than being caused by a lack of trust, the financial crisis of 2007 can be characterized by a shift from personal trust, with its normative and epistemic implications, towards too much “systemic trust”. Through a process of legalization and formalization, loans became standardized, and lenders relied not on the trustworthiness of borrowers, but on their legal claims and the ability …Read more
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23A realist epistemic utopia? Epistemic practices in a climate campJournal of Social Philosophy 53 (1): 38-58. 2021.Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 53, Issue 1, Page 38-58, Spring 2022.
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22Hegel's Thought in Europe: Currents, Crosscurrents and Undercurrents (edited book)Palgrave. 2013.It is not clear what the intellectual history of the last 200 years would have looked like without the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel, but it is clear that it would have looked different. His vast intellectual system was taken up by thinkers from left to right, and from very different philosophical schools. This volume brings together accessible, concise essays from leading scholars that present important currents of Hegelian thought in different European countries, including pre-revolutionary Russi…Read more
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21The game you are in: Misleading through social norms and what’s wrong with itFilozofija I Društvo 28 (2): 250-269. 2017.This paper discusses the phenomenon of misleading about “the game you are in.” Individuals who mislead others in this way draw on the fact that we rely on social norms for regulating the levels of alertness, openness, and trust we use in different epistemic situations. By pretending to be in a certain game with a certain epistemic situation, they can entice others to reveal information or to exhibit low levels of alertness, thereby acting against their own interests. I delineate this phenomenon …Read more
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20Bodies at WorkSocial Theory and Practice 50 (1): 57-79. 2024.“Home office” has become a reality for many employees. What is normatively at stake in this shift in the geography of work, given the various forms of structural injustice in our societies? Drawing on the normative criteria of employee well-being and protection from harm, autonomy, non-discrimination, environmental impact, and the role of workplaces as spaces of social encounters, I defend two claims: First, decisions about where individuals work need to be proceduralized on a fair basis, giving…Read more
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20Global Trade with an Epistemic UpgradeMoral Philosophy and Politics 5 (2): 257-279. 2018.This paper takes a social epistemology perspective on markets in general and trade deals in particular. Normatively, it is based on considerations of democratic accountability and contestation. Empirically, it is based on the assumption that all markets are embedded in institutional frameworks. Knowledge plays an important role in the institutional framework of markets: it matters both at the level of content – which knowledge has to be processed in what way, according to the market rules? – and…Read more
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20Algorithmisches Entscheiden, Ambiguitätstoleranz und die Frage nach dem SinnDeutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 69 (2): 197-213. 2021.In more and more contexts, human decision-making is replaced by algorithmic decision-making. While promising to deliver efficient and objective decisions, algorithmic decision systems have specific weaknesses, some of which are particularly dangerous if data are collected and processed by profit-oriented companies. In this paper, I focus on two problems that are at the root of the logic of algorithmic decision-making: (1) (in)tolerance for ambiguity, and (2) instantiations of Campbell’s law, i. …Read more
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19Spencer J. Pack's Aristotle, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx: on some fundamental issues in 21st century political economy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2010, 288 pp (review)Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 5 (2): 138. 2012.
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19Two Ways of “Taming” the MarketProceedings of the Hegel Society of America 22 147-162. 2015.This paper discusses, in a comparative perspective, the two institutions in Hegel’s account civil society in the Philosophy of Right that aim at ‘taming’ the free market: the police and the corporations. It argues that although Hegel claims to have taken up the insights of the economists of his day, he has done so in a rather limited way, and he remains sceptical about many of the ‘laws’ formulated by economists. In order to derive such laws, economists reduce individual preferences to a few cat…Read more
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19Book Review: Geschichte des Kapitalismus, by Jürgen KockaGeschichte des Kapitalismus, by KockaJürgen. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2013 (review)Political Theory 43 (3): 420-423. 2015.(book review)
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18Shared Standards versus Competitive Pressures in JournalismJournal of Applied Philosophy 39 (3): 393-406. 2022.Democratic societies need media that uphold journalistic standards of truthfulness and objectivity. But sensationalism has always been a temptation for journalists, and given the intense competition between news outlets, especially in the online world, there is pressure on them to ‘chase the clicks’. The article analyzes the incentive structures for journalists – focusing on the harmfulness of sensationalist framing as an example – and the challenges of establishing shared standards in a highly …Read more
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18„Moral Luck“ in Moral und RechtArchiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie 99 (2): 212-227. 2013.A case of Moral Luck occurs whenever we normatively assess agents for things that depend on factors beyond their control. The paper takes a comparative approach and examines how morality and law deal with such cases. The comparative perspective allows us to explain the problem of Moral Luck as a tension inherent in normative orders: While normative orders are based on a strong connection between responsibility and voluntariness, this idealist assumption is at least partly at odds with their func…Read more
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17Eigentumsrechte im FinanzsystemDeutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 62 (3). 2014.This paper asks how property rights in the financial system can be nor- matively justified. It argues that in the current financial system, we find property rights with very different normative bases, some of which are stronger than others. In fact, there is a systematic gap between the normative priorities (which property rights deserve protection?) and the de facto priorities (which property rights are in fact protected?). I draw on the three traditional approaches for justifying property righ…Read more
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17Qualified market access and inter-disciplinarityEthics and Global Politics 7 (2): 83-94. 2014.This note offers reflections on qualified market access —the practice of linking trade agreements to values such as human rights, labour standards, or environmental protection. This idea has been suggested by political theorists as a way of fulfilling our duties to the global poor and of making the global economic system more just, and it has influenced a number of concrete policies, such as European Union trade policies. Yet, in order to assess its merits tout court, different perspectives and …Read more
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15Two challenges for participatory deliberative democracy: expertise and the workplaceKrisis 40 (1): 91-98. 2020.This essay is part of a dossier on Cristina Lafont's book Democracy without Shortcuts.
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14Performance and Progress: Essays on Capitalism, Business, and Society, edited by Subramanian Rangan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 472 pp. ISBN: 978-0198744283 (review)Business Ethics Quarterly 27 (1): 143-146. 2017.
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14The epistemic division of labour in markets: knowledge, global trade and the preconditions of morally responsible agencyEconomics and Philosophy 36 (2): 266-286. 2020.Markets allow for the processing of decentralized information through the price mechanism. But in addition, many markets rely on other mechanisms in markets, or non-market institutions, that provide and manage other forms of knowledge. Within national economies, these institutions form an ‘epistemic infrastructure’ for markets. In global markets, in contrast, this epistemic infrastructure is very patchy, undermining the preconditions for morally responsible agency. New technologies might help to…Read more
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14Reclaiming the System. Moral Responsibility, Divided Labour, and the Role of Organizations in Society. Oxford uOxford University Press. 2018.The world of wage labour seems to have become a soulless machine, an engine of social and environmental destruction. Employees seem to be nothing but 'cogs' in this system - but is this true? Located at the intersection of political theory, moral philosophy, and business ethics, this book questions the picture of the world of work as a 'system'. Hierarchical organizations, both in the public and in the private sphere, have specific features of their own. This does not mean, however, that they ca…Read more
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12Realismus statt SonntagsredenDeutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 66 (3): 383-386. 2018.Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 66 Heft: 3 Seiten: 383-386.
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1011 Hegel als Denker des MarktesIn Ludwig Siep (ed.), G. W. F. Hegel: Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, De Gruyter. pp. 209-224. 2016.The chapter provides an overview of Hegel's account of the market in his chapter on "civil society.
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10Die strukturelle Perspektive auf globale Gerechtigkeit und die Verantwortung epistemischer GemeinschaftenIn Julian Nida-Rümelin, Detlef Daniels & Nicole Wloka (eds.), Internationale Gerechtigkeit Und Institutionelle Verantwortung, De Gruyter. pp. 369-382. 2019.
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University of GroningenAssociate Professor
University of Oxford
DPhil, 2011
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
19th Century Philosophy |