•  44
    Duty-Sensitive Self-Ownership
    Social Philosophy and Policy 36 (2): 264-283. 2019.
    This essay defends duty-sensitive self-ownership, a view about the special authority people have over their bodies that is designed to capture what is attractive about self-ownership theories without the implausible stringency usually associated with them.
  •  97
    The Conventionalist Challenge to Natural Rights Theory
    Social Theory and Practice 43 (3): 569-587. 2017.
    Call the conventionalist challenge to natural rights theory the claim that natural rights theory fails to capture the fact that moral rights are shaped by social and legal convention. While the conventionalist challenge is a natural concern, it is less than clear what this challenge amounts to. This paper aims to develop a clear formulation strong enough to put pressure on the natural rights theorist and precise enough to clarify what an adequate response would require.
  •  87
    Non-Aristotelian Political Animals
    History of Philosophy Quarterly 32 (4): 293-311. 2015.
    Aristotle claims that human beings are by nature political animals. We might think there is a way for non-Aristotelians to affirm something like this—that human beings are political, though not by nature in the Aristotelian sense. It is not clear, however, precisely what this amounts to. In this paper, I try to explain what the claim that human beings are political animals might mean. I also consider what it would it look like to defend this claim, which I call the normative political animal the…Read more
  •  133
    A Feminist Defense of the Unity of the Virtues
    Philosophia 41 (3): 693-702. 2013.
    In The Impossibility of Perfection, Michael Slote tries to show that the traditional Aristotelian doctrine of the unity of the virtues is mistaken. His argumentative strategy is to provide counterexamples to this doctrine, by showing that there are what he calls “partial virtues”—pairs of virtues that conflict with one another but both of which are ethically indispensible. Slote offers two lines of argument for the existence of partial virtues. The first is an argument for the partiality of a pa…Read more
  •  72
    Rights Forfeiture Theorists Should Embrace the Duty View of Punishment
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (2): 317-327. 2017.
    In this paper, I bring into conversation with each other two views about the justification of punishment: the rights forfeiture theory and the duty view. I argue that philosophers attracted to the former should instead accept the latter.