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73Closet dualism and mental causationCanadian Journal of Philosophy 28 (2): 161-181. 1998.Serious doubts about nonreductive materialism — the orthodoxy of the past two decades in philosophy of mind — have been long overdue. Jaegwon Kim has done perhaps the most to articulate the metaphysical problems that the new breed of materialists must confront in reconciling their physicalism with their commitment to the autonomy of the mental. Although the difficulties confronting supervenience, multiple-realizability, and mental causation have been recurring themes in his work, only mental cau…Read more
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189Nietzsche's metaethics: Against the privilege ReadingsEuropean Journal of Philosophy 8 (3). 2000.
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2Naturalism and naturalized jurisprudenceIn Brian Bix (ed.), Analyzing law: new essays in legal theory, Oxford University Press. pp. 79. 1998.
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38The 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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137The case for Nietzschean moral psychologyIn Brian Leiter & Neil Sinhababu (eds.), Nietzsche and morality, Oxford University Press. 2007.Contemporary moral psychology has been dominated by two broad traditions, one usually associated with Aristotle, the other with Kant. The broadly Aristotelian approach emphasizes the role of childhood upbringing in the development of good moral character, and the role of such character in ethical behavior. The broadly Kantian approach emphasizes the role of freely chosen conscious moral principles in ethical behavior. We review a growing body of experimental evidence that suggests that both of t…Read more
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Morality criticsIn Brian Leiter & Michael Rosen (eds.), The Oxford handbook of continental philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2007.
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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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95Legal formalism and legal realism: What is the issue?: Brian LeiterLegal Theory 16 (2): 111-133. 2010.In teaching jurisprudence, I typically distinguish between two different families of theories of adjudication—theories of how judges do or should decide cases. “Formalist” theories claim that the law is “rationally” determinate, that is, the class of legitimate legal reasons available for a judge to offer in support of his or her decision justifies one and only one outcome either in all cases or in some significant and contested range of cases ; and adjudication is thus “autonomous” from other k…Read more
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48Objectivity in Law and Morals (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2000.The seven original essays included in this volume from 2000, written by some of the world's most distinguished moral and legal philosophers, offer a sophisticated perspective on issues about the objectivity of legal interpretation and judicial decision-making. They examine objectivity from both metaphysical and epistemological perspectives and develop a variety of approaches, constructive and critical, to the fundamental problems of objectivity in morality. One of the key issues explored is that…Read more
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74Friedrich Nietzsche’s Twilight of the IdolsTopoi 33 (2): 549-555. 2014.This review essay of Nietzsche’s “Twilight of the Idols” (1888) is part of the journal TOPOI’s “Untimely Reviews” series of classic works of philosophy. Themes dealt with are Nietzsche’s attacks on morality, on free will, on mental causation, on Socrates, and on Kant. Connections are drawn with contemporary work by Mark Johnston, David Rosenthal, and Daniel Wegner, among others
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129Nietzsche holds that people lack freedom of the will in any sense that would be sufficient for ascriptions of moral responsibility; that the conscious experience we have of willing is actually epiphenomenal with respect to the actions that follow that experience; and that our actions largely arise through non-conscious processes (psychological and physiological) of which we are only dimly aware, and over which we exercise little or no conscious control. At the same time, Nietzsche, always a mast…Read more
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176Why evolutionary biology is (so far) irrelevant to legal regulationLaw and Philosophy 29 (1): 31-74. 2010.Evolutionary biology – or, more precisely, two (purported) applications of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, namely, evolutionary psychology and what has been called human behavioral biology – is on the cusp of becoming the new rage among legal scholars looking for interdisciplinary insights into the law. We argue that as the actual science stands today, evolutionary biology offers nothing to help with questions about legal regulation of behavior. Only systematic misrepresentati…Read more
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48Naturalizing jurisprudenceIn John R. Shook & Paul Kurtz (eds.), The future of naturalism, Humanity Books. 2009.General jurisprudence-that branch of legal philosophy concerned with the nature of law and adjudication-has been relatively unaffected by the "naturalistic" strains so evident, for example, in the epistemology, philosophy of mind and moral philosophy of the past forty years. This paper sketches three ways in which naturalism might affect jurisprudential inquiry. The paper serves as a kind of precis of the main themes in my book NATURALIZING JURISPRUDENCE: ESSAYS ON AMERICAN LEGAL REALISM AND NAT…Read more
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112The Oxford handbook of continental philosophy (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2007.This Handbook will be an essential reference point for graduate students and professional academics working on continental philosophy, as well as those with an ...
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243Morality in the pejorative sense: On the logic of Nietzsche's critique of moralityBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 3 (1). 1995.(1995). Morality in the pejorative sense: On the logic of Nietzsche's critique of morality. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 113-145
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1Legal Realism, Hard Positivism, and Limits of Conceptual AnalysisIn Jules L. Coleman (ed.), Hart's Postscript: Essays on the Postscript to `the Concept of Law', Oxford University Press Uk. 2000.
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48Ronald Dworkin describes an approach to how courts should decide cases that he associates with Judge Richard Posner as a Chicago School of anti-theoretical, no-nonsense jurisprudence. Since Professor Dworkin takes his own view of adjudication to be diametrically opposed to that of the Chicago School, it might seem fair, then, to describe Dworkin's own theory as an instance of pro-theoretical, nonsense jurisprudence. That characterization is not one, needless to say, that Professor Dworkin welcom…Read more
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95Why Tolerate Religion?Princeton University Press. 2012."--Christopher L. Eisgruber, Princeton University "This is a provocative and bracing essay, one that is bound to stimulate much discussion.
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6Closet Dualism and Mental CausationCanadian Journal of Philosophy 28 (2): 161-181. 1998.Serious doubts about nonreductive materialism — the orthodoxy of the past two decades in philosophy of mind — have been long overdue. Jaegwon Kim has done perhaps the most to articulate the metaphysical problems that the new breed of materialists must confront in reconciling their physicalism with their commitment to the autonomy of the mental. Although the difficulties confronting supervenience, multiple-realizability, and mental causation have been recurring themes in his work, only mental cau…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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126Any reader of Foucault's corpus recognizes fairly quickly that it is animated by an ethical impulse, namely, to liberate individuals from a kind of oppression from which they suffer. This oppression, however, does not involve the familiar tyranny of the Leviathan or the totalitarian state; it exploits instead values that the victim of oppression herself accepts, and which then leads the oppressed agent to be complicit in her subjugation. It also depends, crucially, on a skeptical thesis about th…Read more
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23American legal realismIn Martin P. Golding & William A. Edmundson (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory, Wiley-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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University of ChicagoRegular Faculty
Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Law |
19th Century Philosophy |