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49Social 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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30Review: James, David, Rousseau and German Idealism: Freedom, Dependence and Necessity (review)Kantian Review 20 (1): 155-162. 2015.
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642The 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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26Reasonable 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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25Freedom 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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58Singularity Without Equivalence: The Complex Unity of Kant’s Categorical ImperativeJournal of Value Inquiry 50 (2): 369-384. 2016.
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19David 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.
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167Are 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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4567Robin Hood Justice: Why Robin Hood Took from the Rich and Gave to the Poor (and We Should Too)Public Affairs Quarterly 3 (2). 2016.The legend of Robin Hood exemplifies a distinct concern of justice neglected by theorists: the distributive results of systemic injustices. Robin Hood’s redistributive activities are justified by the principle that the distributive results of systemic injustices are unjust and should be corrected. This principle has relevance beyond the legend: since current inequalities in the US are results of systemic injustices, the US has good reason to take from the rich and give to the poor.
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30Absolute 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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26The 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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50Reidar 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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27Larry D. Kramer, The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review (review)Journal of Value Inquiry 40 (1): 97-101. 2006.
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1416The 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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Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |