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50The Categorical Imperative in Action: Enabler and Enablee of Self-LegislationPhilosophia 51 (2): 597-607. 2023.Their important exegetical and philosophical disagreements notwithstanding, Pauline Kleingeld and Marcus Willaschek, on the one hand, and Alyssa Bernstein, on the other, seem to agree that Kant’s Categorical Imperative transcends the contemporary dichotomy between moral realism and ethical constructivism. My contribution is an attempt to further elaborate on the third, unique, conceptual option that they have identified. I employ the notion of an “enabling condition,” introduced in epistemology …Read more
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9Why the law matters to you: citizenship, agency, and public identityDe Gruyter. 2013.This book presents an answer to the question of why modern legal institutions and the idea of citizenship are important for leading a free life. The majority of views in political and legal philosophy regard the law merely as a useful instrument, employed to render our lives more secure and to enable us to engage in cooperate activities more efficiently. The view developed here defends a non-instrumentalist alternative of why the law matters. It identifies the law as a constitutive feature of ou…Read more
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14Telic Priority: Prioritarianism’s Impersonal ValueMoral Philosophy and Politics 7 (1): 169-189. 2020.I develop the recent claim that prioritarianism, and not only its egalitarian competitors, must be committed to an impersonal outcome value (i. e. a value that makes a distribution better even if this does not affect anyone’s welfare). This value, that I label telic priority and that consists in the goodness of benefits going to the worst off recipients, implies implausible judgments that more than compete with ‘pure’ (Parfit) egalitarianism’s applause in leveling down scenarios. ‘Pure prioritar…Read more
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24The Hegelian Solution to The Paradox of Self-Constitution: Instincts and InstitutionsHegel-Jahrbuch 2017 (1): 151-155. 2017.
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44Acting Under the Guise of the Bad – Editorial IntroductionEthical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (1): 1-3. 2018.I introduce the topic of the Special Issue and highlight the central themes that the six contributors address in their essays. The moral-philosophical problem of the possibility of bad action is situated within the broader context of its action-theoretical significance, that is, as the most important challenge to the influential idea that an intentional action is necessarily performed under the guise of the good. J. David Velleman’s discussion of the character of Milton’s Satan is mentioned to i…Read more
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31Two Conceptions of Practical ReasonsLes ateliers de l'éthique/The Ethics Forum 11 (2-3): 108-132. 2016.Christoph Hanisch | : I discuss and compare Joseph Raz’s and Christine Korsgaard’s accounts of reasons for action. One fundamental disagreement separating the two approaches is the role that they assign to two central features of practical deliberation: Korsgaard assigns priority to identity-constituting practical principles, whereas for Raz reasons are the fundamental normative units. In the course of this comparison, two claims are defended: Taking-up a realist stance vis-à-vis one’s reasons i…Read more
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34An Autonomy-Centered Defense of DemocracyInternational Philosophical Quarterly 53 (4): 371-384. 2013.According to Thomas Christiano, autonomy-centered arguments for democratic rights are not successful. These arguments fail to show that there is anything wrong with citizens who want to trade-off their political rights in exchange for more autonomy regarding their private affairs. The trade-off problem suggests that democratic participation is not necessary for leading a free life. My reply employs recent work in the republican tradition. The republican conception of freedom as non-domination su…Read more
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53Kant on DemocracyKant Studien 107 (1): 64-88. 2016.Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 107 Heft: 1 Seiten: 64-88.
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68Constitutivism and Inescapability: A DiagnosisPhilosophia 44 (4): 1145-1164. 2016.A central element of constitutivist accounts of categorical normativity is the claim that the ultimate foundation of the relevant kind of practical authority is sourced in certain tasks, features, and aims that every person inevitably possesses and inescapably has to deal with. We have no choice but to be agents and this fact is responsible for the norms and principles that condition our agency-related activities to have anunconditional normative grip on us. Critics of constitutivism argue that …Read more
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41The Legality of Self‐ConstitutionRatio Juris 28 (4): 452-469. 2015.An influential strand in recent action-theory employs constitutivist arguments in order to present accounts of individual agency and practical identity. I argue for an extension of this framework into the interpersonal realm, and suggest using it to reassess issues in jurisprudence. A legal system is an instantiation of the solution to the inescapable tasks of self-constituting action and identity-formation in the presence of other agents. Law's validity and normativity can be enlightened when t…Read more
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83Constitutivism and Kantian Constructivism in Ethical Theory: Editorial IntroductionPhilosophia 44 (4): 1125-1128. 2016.The introduction summarizes the main arguments formulated in the six papers of this special issue on Constitutivism and Kantian Constructivism in Ethical Theory. We highlight the unifying theme addressed in the essays, i.e., the question of whether constitutivism is able to fulfill the promise of providing an account of normativity starting from relatively slender assumptions, including the avoidance of realist presuppositions.
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26This dissertation is concerned with the moral-philosophical dimensions of global poverty and inequality. The first chapter argues in favour of justice-based – contrasted with beneficence-based – obligations asking the wealthy to actively do something about severe poverty abroad. The distinguishing property of justice-based obligations is that they derive their high level of moral stringency from the fact that they ask the obligation-bearer to rectify for past and/or present violations of negativ…Read more