•  7
    Ardor (review)
    The Bulletin of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion 46 11-13. 2015.
  •  13
    Our first gaze into Black Mirror, “The National Anthem,” forces us, the viewers, to think about how moral obligations should be weighed against other competing obligations and also to examine our desire to see spectacle. In this chapter we discuss the three main ways in which philosophers think about moral obligations and examine how these ethical theories are employed by different individuals and groups in the episode. We also discuss how this particular episode aligns with Black Mirror's gener…Read more
  •  13
    Can Utilitarianism Make Sense of ‘Political Obligation’?
    Southwest Philosophy Review 39 (1): 249-260. 2023.
    Despite utilitarianism’s status as one of the major ethical theories, historically it has largely been dismissed by theorists concerned with political obligation. The primary goal of this paper is to respond to the structural objections that have been leveled against utilitarian accounts of political obligation. In the process of responding to these objections I fi rst offer a sketch of a general account of “obligations” which the utilitarian can endorse. Secondly, I argue that anti-utilitarian …Read more
  •  448
    The foundational principles of representative democracy are under attack globally. What we desperately need are enlightened and persuasive public intellectuals who can help us see through the fog of our fear, anger, and disillusionment, to find our rational political commitments again. One of these public intellectuals is undoubtedly Yuval Noah Harari, the bestselling author of three recent books – Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. Harari is also a frequent contributor in …Read more
  •  3
    The Social Media Commons: Public Sphere, Agonism, and Algorithmic Obligation
    with Jose Marichal and Richard Neve
    Journal of Information Technology and Politics 17. 2020.
    This paper takes a unique approach to framing the political obligation social media companies like Twitter and Facebook have in a democratic society by casting the public sphere as a common-pool resource. Over the last decade or so much of our civic discourse has moved to social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. This paper argues that just as citizens have an obligation to one another, social media companies have an obligation to promote agonistic forms of civic, political discourse …Read more
  •  25
    The Broad Nature and Importance of Public Philosophy
    Precollege Philosophy and Public Practice 2 72-87. 2020.
    Many professional philosophers are hesitant about “public philosophy”—unsure about what it is and how it’s done, and downright pessimistic about whether it is an important and valuable philosophical practice. In response to this hesitancy and in support of public philosophy, I argue that most of these philosophers already find at least one form of public philosophy important and valuable for the discipline and profession: teaching. I offer and defend a broad conception of public philosophy in or…Read more
  •  28
    In this chapter I take up the question of how Aristotle understood the relationship between the contemplative life and the active life in contributing to human flourishing and to the political regime. While the connections between Aristotle’s ethics and politics are abundant, there exists a prevalent assumption in the inclusive/dominant debate concerning the interpretation of eudaimonia (human flourishing) that Aristotle’s Politics cannot or should not play a prominent role in helping to underst…Read more
  •  66
    Adding Substance to the Debate: Descartes on Freedom of the Will
    Essays in Philosophy 14 (2): 218-238. 2013.
    It is widely accepted by commentators that Descartes believed in freedom of the will, but it is fiercely debated whether he accepted a libertarian or compatibilist notion of freedom. With this paper I argue that an examination of Descartes’ conception of ‘substance,’ specifically his distinction between divine substance and created substance, is a fruitful source for the debate regarding Descartes on freedom of the will. I argue that the commentators who read Descartes as a libertarian are force…Read more
  •  48
    A Utilitarian Account of Political Obligation
    Dissertation, The University of Iowa. 2014.
    One of the core issues in contemporary political philosophy is concerned with `political obligation.' Stated in an overly simplified way, the question being asked when one investigates political obligation is, "What, if anything, do citizens owe to their government and how are these obligations generated if they do exist?" The majority of political philosophers investigating this issue agree that a political obligation is a moral requirement to act in certain ways concerning political matters. D…Read more
  •  42
    A Unique Metaphysical Problem for Moral Realism
    Southwest Philosophy Review 29 (1): 257-265. 2013.
    The standard moral realist response to the charge of “queerness” has been a type of companions in guilt defense. This response asserts that moral properties are no more queer than other abstract properties and since most people accept these other abstract properties into their ontology then they ought to also accept moral properties. Moral realists contend that moral properties face no special problem. In this paper, I argue that moral properties do face a unique problem – the moral realist1 is …Read more