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41Rights and the GoodPhilosophical Quarterly. forthcoming.What is the connection between moral rights and the good? While familiar normative theories give justificatory precedence to one notion over the other, this paper explores a neglected alternative: when properly specified, the notion of moral rights and of the good conceptually depend on each other.1
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43The relational wrong of PovertyEthical Theory and Moral Practice 26 (2): 303-319. 2023.In this paper I explore elements from Kant’s philosophy of right to develop a relational account of the wrong of poverty. Poverty is a relational wrong because it involves relations of problematic dependence, inequality, and humiliation. Such relations infringe the rights to freedom and equality of the poor. And the called-for response is one of public recognition and protection of the rights of the poor. This position means we must radically reconceptualize our individual duties to the poor: no…Read more
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71Moral rights without balancingPhilosophical Studies 179 (2): 549-569. 2021.How should we think about apparent conflicts of moral rights? I defend a non-balancing and holistic specification model: non-balancing because moral rights have absolute deontic stringency regardless of any balance of independent values; holistic because the content of moral rights is limited only by that of other moral rights. Holistic Specification, as I call the model, offers a principled, non-consequentialist explanation of exceptions to moral rights. Moreover, Holistic Specification explain…Read more
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131Relational PrimitivismPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (2): 401-422. 2019.Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.
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15Humanity without Equality?Philosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche. forthcoming.Download.
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83The Relational Structure of Human DignityAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (4): 738-752. 2018.ABSTRACTThis article argues that received accounts of the concept of human dignity face more difficulties than has been appreciated, when explaining the connection between human dignity and the duty of respect that dignity is supposed to generate. It also argues that a novel, relational, account has the adequate structure to explain such connection.
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63Two Second‐Personal Conceptions of the Dignity of PersonsEuropean Journal of Philosophy 25 (4): 921-943. 2017.In spite of the burgeoning philosophical literature on human dignity, Stephen Darwall's second-personal account of the dignity of persons has not received the attention it deserves. This article investigates Darwall's account and argues that it faces a dilemma, for it succumbs either to a problem of antecedence or to the wrong kind of reasons problem. But this need not mean one should reject a second-personal account. Instead, I argue that an alternative second-personal conception, one I will ca…Read more
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26Human Rights, Categorical Duties: A Dilemma for InstrumentalismUtilitas 28 (4): 368-395. 2016.Contemporary theorists tend to think that the basic justification of human rights is instrumental, as efficient means for producing the theorist's preferred ultimate value or values. Contemporary theorists also tend to think that human rights have a distinctive normative force, correlating with categorical duties. This article shows that instrumentalist accounts of human rights face a dilemma. The very structure of any instrumentalist account means that such an account faces extraordinary diffic…Read more
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40The Indivisibility of Human RightsLaw and Philosophy 36 (4): 389-418. 2017.This article defends a novel, normative conception of the indivisibility of human rights. Human rights are indivisible because normative commitment to one mutually entails normative commitment to another. The normative conception enables us to defend three important theoretical and practical corollaries. First, as a conceptual thesis normative indivisibility lets us see how human rights constitute a unified system not liable to the typical counter-examples to indivisibility as mutual indispensab…Read more
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64Human DignityPhilosophy Compass 11 (4): 201-210. 2016.This article focuses on human dignity as a moral idea and, in particular, on a single but fundamental question: what conception of human dignity, if any, can generate an egalitarian duty to respect all persons? After surveying two mainstream and two alternative conceptions, the article suggests that explaining how human dignity generates an egalitarian duty of respect may be more difficult than has been appreciated
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51The Public Form of Law: Kant on the Second-Personal Constitution of FreedomKantian Review 21 (1): 101-126. 2016.The two standard interpretations of Kant’s view of the relationship between external freedom and public law make one of the terms a means for the production of the other: either public law is justified as a means to external freedom, or external freedom is justified as a means for producing a system of public law. This article defends an alternative, constitutive interpretation: public law is justified because it is partly constitutive of external freedom. The constitutive view requires conceivi…Read more
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42Human rights and the rights of states: a relational accountCanadian Journal of Philosophy 46 (3): 291-317. 2016.What is the relationship between human rights and the rights of states? Roughly, while cosmopolitans insist that international morality must regard as basic the interests of individuals, statists maintain that the state is of fundamental moral significance. This article defends a relational version of statism. Human rights are ultimately grounded in a relational norm of reciprocal independence and set limits to the exercise of public authority, but, contra the cosmopolitan, the state is of funda…Read more
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37The Very Thought of (Wronging) YouPhilosophical Topics 42 (1): 153-175. 2014.Claiming rights against one another is a perfectly familiar phenomenon. We express the elementary thought you cannot do that to me in a variety of ways. And yet, in spite of the perfect familiarity of this phenomenon, the two standard philosophical theories of rights face notorious difficulties in accounting for it. My aim in this paper is to introduce a distinctive, second-personal account of rights. I will call this the independence theory of rights, the view that rights are specifications of …Read more
Ariel Zylberman
University At Albany (SUNY)
State University of New York, Albany
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University At Albany (SUNY)Department of PhilosophyAssistant Professor
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Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |