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43Reply to Five Critics of Why Tolerate Religion?Criminal Law and Philosophy 10 (3): 547-558. 2016.This is my contribution to a symposium on my book Why Tolerate Religion?, in which I respond to essays by François Boucher and Cécile Laborde, Frederick Schauer, Corey Brettschneider, and Peter Jones. I clarify and revise my view of the sense in which some religious beliefs are “insulated from reasons and evidence” in response to the criticisms of Boucher and Laborde, but take issue with other aspects of their critique. I defend most of my original argument against utilitarian and egalitarian ob…Read more
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43Legal positivismIn Dennis Patterson (ed.), A Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory, Blackwell. 1996.This chapter contains sections titled: Jurisprudence: Method and Subject Matter Legality and Authority Positivism: Austin vs. Hart The Authority of Law Judicial Discretion Incorporationism and Legality Raz' s Theory of Authority Incorporationism and Authority Conclusion Postscript References.
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42This is a new preface written for the Greek translation of my NIETZSCHE ON MORALITY (Routledge, 2002), which will be published by Okto Publishing (Athens) in 2009. The publisher asked that I discuss how I became interested in Nietzsche, how my views about him evolved, and also how I would respond to the still-common perception (esp. in Europe) of Nietzsche as a thinker of "the right.".
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42Naturalizing jurisprudence: essays on American legal realism and naturalism in legal philosophyOxford University Press. 2007.Introduction: From legal realism to naturalized jurisprudence -- A note on legal indeterminacy -- Part I. American legal realism and its critics -- Rethinking legal realism: toward a naturalized jurisprudence (1997) -- Legal realism and legal positivism reconsidered (2001) -- Is there an "American" jurisprudence? (1997) -- Postscript to Part I: Interpreting legal realism -- Part II. Ways of naturalizing jurisprudence -- Legal realism, hard positivism, and the limits of conceptual analysis (199…Read more
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37The Demarcation Problem in Jurisprudence: A New Case for ScepticismOxford Journal of Legal Studies 31 (4): 663-677. 2011.Legal philosophers have been preoccupied with specifying the differences between two systems of normative guidance that are omnipresent in all modern human societies: law and morality. Positivists propose a solution to this ‘Demarcation Problem’ according to which the legal validity of a norm cannot depend on its being morally valid, either in all or at least some possible legal systems. The proposed analysis purports to specify the essential and necessary features of law in virtue of which this…Read more
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37The Paradox of Fatalism and Self-Creation in NietzscheIn John Richardson & Brian Leiter (eds.), Nietzsche, Oxford University Press. 2001.
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36Review of Christopher Janaway, Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche's Genealogy (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (6). 2008.
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31MarxRoutledge Philosophers. 2024.Karl Marx (1818-1883) was trained as a philosopher and steeped in the thought of Hegel and German idealism, but turned away from philosophy in his mid-twenties towards politics, economics and history. It is for his these subjects Marx is best known and in which his work and ideas shaped the very nature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, Marx's engagement with philosophy runs through most of his work, especially in his philosophy of history and in moral and political philosophy. …Read more
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30Letters to the EditorProceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 71 (2). 1997.
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29Review of Tamsin Shaw, Nietzsche's Political Skepticism (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (1). 2009.
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28Moral Psychology with NietzscheOxford University Press. 2019.Brian Leiter draws on empirical psychology to defend a set of radical ideas from Nietzsche: there is no objectively true morality, there is no free will, no one is ever morally responsible, and our conscious thoughts play almost no significant role in our actions. Nietzsche emerges as not just a great philosopher but a prescient psychologist.
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23Nietzsche's Naturalism and Nineteenth-Century BiologyJournal of Nietzsche Studies 48 (1): 71-82. 2017.Christian Emden has written an informative if sometimes philosophically frustrating book about Nietzsche’s engagement with both neo-Kantian philosophers 1 and the life sciences from the 1840s onward. Emden documents the preceding with an eye to shedding light not only on Nietzsche’s naturalism, on “what does it mean to ‘translate humanity back into nature’” as Nietzsche put it in BGE, but also on what Emden calls “the problem of normativity,” variously stated as how to “obtain an understanding o…Read more
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22Nietzsche's Metaethics: Against the Privilege ReadingsEuropean Journal of Philosophy 8 (3): 277-297. 2000.
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20Review of David Hoekema, Hoekema's Review of Wilshire (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2002 (10). 2002.
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18On the Relevance of Etiology to Justification (with Reference to Marx and Nietzsche)Midwest Studies in Philosophy 47 157-169. 2023.Some philosophers associated with the post-Kantian Continental traditions in philosophy (for example, Marx and Nietzsche) think that the etiology of a belief can impugn the epistemic status of that belief, leading us, correctly, to be “suspicious” of it; let us call them “Etiological Critics. Many analytic philosophers, responding to these and related etiological critiques within Anglophone philosophy are unimpressed. These analytic philosophers agree that facts about the etiology of belief migh…Read more
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16American legal realismIn Martin P. Golding & William A. Edmundson (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory, Blackwell. 2004.This chapter contains section titled: Introduction Legal Indeterminacy The Core Claim of American Legal Realism Two Branches of Realism Naturalized Jurisprudence? How Should Judges Decide Cases? Legacy of Legal Realism I: Legal Education and Scholarship in the United States Legacy of Legal Realism II: Legal Theory References Further Reading.
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16Book Review (reviewing Tamsin Shaw, Nietzsche's Political Skepticism (2007)) (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. forthcoming.
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1323. Moralities Are a Sign-Language of the AffectsIn João Constâncio (ed.), Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, De Gruyter. pp. 574-596. 2015.
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11Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law: Volume 2 (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2013.Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Law is an annual forum for new philosophical work on law. The essays range widely over general jurisprudence (the nature of law, adjudication, and legal reasoning), philosophical foundations of specific areas of law (from criminal to international law), and other philosophical topics relating to legal theory
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University of ChicagoRegular Faculty
Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Law |
19th Century Philosophy |