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33Absolute Freedom of Contract: Grotian Lessons for LibertariansCritical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 25 (1): 107-119. 2013.Libertarians often rely on arguments that subordinate the principle of liberty to the value of its economic consequences. This invites the question of what a pure libertarian theory of justice—one that takes liberty as its overriding concern—would look like. Grotius's political theory provides a template for such a libertarianism, but it also entails uncomfortable commitments that can be avoided only by compromising the principle of liberty. According to Grotius, each person should be free to de…Read more
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29The Ideal of Peace and the Morality of WarTheoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 62 (145). 2015.According to both common wisdom and long-standing tradition, the ideal of peace is central to the morality of war. I argue that this notion is mistaken, not because peace is unachievable and utopian, though it might be for many of today’s asymmetrical conflicts; nor because the pursuit of peace is counterproductive, though, again, it might be for many of today’s conflicts; the problem, rather, is that the pursuit of peace is not a proper objective of war.
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52Reidar Maliks, Kant’s Politics in Context Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014 Pp. 195 ISBN 9780199645152 $85.00 (review)Kantian Review 20 (3): 492-497. 2015.
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28Larry D. Kramer, The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review (review)Journal of Value Inquiry 40 (1): 97-101. 2006.
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1473The Metaphysics of Vice: Kant and the Problem of Moral FreedomRethinking Kant 4. 2015.In line with the tradition running from Ancients through Christian thought, Kant affirms the idea of moral freedom: that true freedom consists in moral self-determination. The idea of moral freedom raises the problem of moral freedom: if freedom is moral self-determination, it seems that the wicked are not free and therefore not responsible for their wrongdoings. In this essay I discuss Kant's solution to this problem. I argue that Kant distinguishes between four modalities of freedom as moral s…Read more
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Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, by John Rawls, S. Freeman ed. Harvard University Press, 2007 (review)Journal of Value Inquiry 43 (1). 2009.
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1137Are Economic Liberties Basic Rights?Politics, Philosophy and Economics 13 (1): 23-44. 2014.In this essay I discuss a powerful challenge to high-liberalism: the challenge presented by neoclassical liberals that the high-liberal assumptions and values imply that the full range of economic liberties are basic rights. If the claim is true, then the high-liberal road from ideals of democracy and democratic citizenship to left-liberal institutions is blocked. Indeed, in that case the high-liberal is committed to an institutional scheme more along the lines of laissez-faire capitalism than p…Read more
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53Social Cooperation and Basic Economic Rights: A Rawlsian Route to Social DemocracyJournal of Social Philosophy 47 (3): 288-308. 2016.The central idea of Rawls’s theory of justice is the idea of democratic society as a fair system of cooperation between free and equal citizens. The moral powers of democratic citizens are the capacities presupposed by this idea. Rawls identifies two such powers, the capacity for a conception of the good and the capacity for a sense of justice. I argue that the idea of democratic citizenship presupposes also a third moral power: the capacity for working. Since the basic rights are the rights nec…Read more
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31Review: James, David, Rousseau and German Idealism: Freedom, Dependence and Necessity (review)Kantian Review 20 (1): 155-162. 2015.
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671The structural diversity of historical injusticesJournal of Social Philosophy 37 (3). 2006.Driven by a sharp increase in claims for reparations, reparative justice has become a topic of academic debate. To some extent this debate has been marred by a failure to realize the complexity of reparative justice. In this essay we try to amend this shortcoming. We do this by developing a taxonomy of different kinds of wrongs that can underwrite claims to reparations. We identify four kinds of wrongs: entitlement violations, unjust exclusions from an otherwise acceptable system of entitlements…Read more
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27Reasonable Disagreement and Metaphysical Immodesty: A Comment on Talbott’s Which Rights Should be Universal?Human Rights Review 9 (2): 167-179. 2008.Talbott grounds human rights in a moral epistemology that supports metaphysical immodesty but requires epistemic modesty. Metaphysical immodesty provides prescriptive confidence, while epistemic modesty prevents moral imperialism. I offer some reasons for doubting that Talbott’s moral epistemology yields the desired result. Insofar as Talbott aims for a determinate conception of human rights that could serve as the backbone of a system of international law, Talbott must deal with issues of reaso…Read more
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27Freedom as both Fact and PostulateIn Stefano Bacin, Alfredo Ferrarin, Claudio La Rocca & Margit Ruffing (eds.), Kant und die Philosophie in weltbürgerlicher Absicht. Akten des XI. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, De Gruyter. pp. 533-546. 2013.
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60Singularity Without Equivalence: The Complex Unity of Kant’s Categorical ImperativeJournal of Value Inquiry 50 (2): 369-384. 2016.
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20David James, Rousseau and German Idealism: Freedom, Dependence and Necessity Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013 Pp. 243 ISBN 9781107037854 $99.00 (review)Kantian Review 20 (1): 155-162. 2015.
Richmond, Virginia, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |