Cornell University
Sage School of Philosophy
PhD, 1977
CV
Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America
Areas of Interest
History of Western Philosophy
  •  1
    10 The Right of Resistance1 (chapt. 16–19)
    In Michaela Rehm & Bernd Ludwig (eds.), John Locke, „Zwei Abhandlungen über die Regierung“, Akademie Verlag. pp. 153-163. 2012.
  •  25
    Civil Disobedience and the Duty to Obey the Law
    In R. G. Frey & Christopher Heath Wellman (eds.), A Companion to Applied Ethics, Blackwell. 2005.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Definitions Justification and the Duty to Obey.
  •  12
    Locke on the Social Contract
    In Matthew Stuart (ed.), A Companion to Locke, Wiley. 2015.
    John Locke's name is invariably included on lists of the modern fathers of social contract thought. This chapter begins with a brief discussion on the basics of social contract thought and the specific ways in which Locke's political philosophy participates in the social contract tradition. In Locke's day, and for well over a century before Locke, social contract theories almost always involved historical claims as well, with the precise relationship between the historical and normative wings of…Read more
  •  21
    Boundaries of Authority: An introduction
    Politics, Philosophy and Economics 18 (4). 2019.
    This is the Introduction to the symposium on A. John Simmons, Boundaries of Authority (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). The Symposium contains articles by David Miller, Cara Nine, and Anna Stilz, and a response by the author.
  •  7
    In this manuscript, “Intersectional Structural Stigma, Community Priorities, and Opportunities for Transgender Health Equity,” Poteat and Simmons outline the legal and policy barriers that impede efforts to end the HIV epidemic among transgender people in the South. They present qualitative and quantitative data from a community engaged research study conducted with transgender adults and other key stakeholders as well as finding from an analysis of policies impacting transgender people in both …Read more
  •  28
    Locke on the Death Penalty
    Philosophy 69 (270): 471-. 1994.
    Brian Calvert has offered us a clear and careful analysis of Locke′s views on punishment and capital punishment. 1 The primary goal of his paper–that of correcting the misperception of Locke as a wholehearted proponent of capital punishment for a wide range of offences–must be allowed to be both laudable and largely achieved in his discussion. But Calvert′s analysis also encourages, I think, a number of serious misunderstandings of Locke′s true position
  •  39
    The Limits of Obligation (review)
    Philosophical Review 93 (2): 300-303. 1984.
  •  10
    Locke and the Right to Punish
    In A. John Simmons, Marshall Cohen, Joshua Cohen & Charles R. Beitz (eds.), Punishment: A Philosophy and Public Affairs Reader, Princeton University Press. pp. 219-258. 1994.
  • Human rights, natural rights, and human dignity
    In Rowan Cruft, S. Matthew Liao & Massimo Renzo (eds.), Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, Oxford University Press Uk. 2015.
  •  2
    Why the Draft Is Hard to Justify
    Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly 1 (2): 9. 1981.
  •  13
    Building on research regarding the influence of national identity salience on attitudes towards international institutions and the impact of nationalism on foreign policy preferences, in a case study of America, I explore the role of chauvinistic nationalism to understand its impact on attitudes towards international jurisdiction of punishment for alleged human rights violations by members of the American military. Using binomial regression of survey responses from the 2014 Cooperative Congressi…Read more
  •  99
    Moral Principles and Political Obligations
    Princeton University Press. 1979.
    Outlining the major competing theories in the history of political and moral philosophy--from Locke and Hume through Hart, Rawls, and Nozick--John Simmons attempts to understand and solve the ancient problem of political obligation. Under what conditions and for what reasons, he asks, are we morally bound to obey the law and support the political institutions of our countries?
  •  25
    The Limits of Lockean Rights in Property
    Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 58 (4): 997-999. 1995.
  •  41
    This book completes A. John Simmons's exploration and development of Lockean moral and political philosophy, a project begun in The Lockean Theory of Rights. Here Simmons discusses the Lockean view of the nature of, grounds for, and limits on political relations between persons. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. T…Read more
  •  32
    Rights and territories: A reply to Nine, Miller, and Stilz
    Politics, Philosophy and Economics 18 (4). 2019.
    ‘Rights and Territories: A Reply to Nine, Miller, and Stilz’ defends the Lockean theory of states’ territorial rights (as this theory was presented in Boundaries of Authority) against the critiques of Nine, Miller, and Stilz. In response to Nine’s concern that such a Lockean theory cannot justify the right of legitimate states to exclude aliens, it is argued that a consent-based theory like the Lockean one is flexible enough to justify a wide range of possible incidents of territorial rights – i…Read more
  •  3
    Works cited
    In On the Edge of Anarchy: Locke, Consent, and the Limits of Society, Princeton University Press. pp. 271-284. 1995.
  • Index
    In On the Edge of Anarchy: Locke, Consent, and the Limits of Society, Princeton University Press. pp. 285-293. 1995.
  •  1
  •  1
    Obedience to law
    In Lawrence C. Becker & Charlotte B. Becker (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Ethics, Garland Publishing. pp. 918--21. 1992.
  •  151
    Locke on the Death Penalty
    Philosophy 69 (270): 471-. 1994.
    Brian Calvert has offered us a clear and careful analysis of Locke's views on punishment and capital punishment. The primary goal of his paper - that of correcting the misperception of Locke as a wholehearted proponent of capital punishment for a wide range of offenses - must be allowed to be both laudable and largely achieved in his discussion. But Calvert's analysis also encourages, I think, a number of serious misunderstandings of Locke's true position
  •  7
    External Justifications and Institutional Roles
    Journal of Philosophy 93 (1): 28-36. 1996.
  •  14
    An Essay on the Modern State
    Philosophical Review 109 (2): 271. 2000.
    Contemporary political philosophers routinely assume that some form of the modern, territorial state must be justified and that in a justified state most of the claims that modern states make will be vindicated. The principal question for them is what form the state must take in order to achieve this justification. How minimal or extensive must the state be, how responsive to groups within its territories and to people without must it be, and so on. Christopher Morris’s An Essay on the Modern St…Read more