•  165
    Same-Sex Marriage, ‘Homosexual Desire,’ and the Capacity to Love
    International Journal of Applied Philosophy 25 (2): 171-186. 2011.
    The issue of same-sex marriage continues to be controversial in the United States. Opponents of same-sex marriage offer a variety of objections in defense of their position. One such objection (which I identify as the Inability to Love objection, or ILO) is that legalizing same-sex marriage would promote a counterfeit good (homosexual marriage) as a genuine good (heterosexual marriage), since homosexuals are incapable of genuine, full erotic love. Proponents of ILO argue that homosexuals are inc…Read more
  •  133
    Abstract: This essay examines two interpretations of Kant's argument for the formula of humanity. Christine M. Korsgaard defends a constructivist reading of Kant's argument, maintaining that humans must view themselves as having absolute value because their power for rational choice confers value on their ends. Allen Wood, however, defends a realist interpretation of Kant's argument, maintaining that humans actually are absolutely valuable and that their choices do not confer value but rather re…Read more
  •  91
    Th e Role of Feelings in Husserl’s Ethics
    Idealistic Studies 39 (1-3): 11-22. 2009.
    Though Husserl tends to receive less attention than other phenomenologists, there is growing interest in his ethics. Proponents of Husserl’s ethics argue that his moral philosophy is not merely of historical interest; Husserl, they claim, can contribute positively to contemporary debates in ethics, specifically debates about the role of feelings in moral agency. This paper raises questions about this last claim. I argue that, on the one hand, Husserl’s moral psychology proves superior to some of…Read more
  •  78
    Is the Same‐sex Marriage Debate Really Just about Marriage?
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 186-203. 2018.
    In What is Marriage? One Man and One Woman: A Defense, Sherif Girgis, Ryan Anderson and Robert George defend the ‘conjugal marriage’ while claiming to make no moral judgments about homosexuality. My contention in this article is that the argument of What is Marriage is not sufficiently different from the arguments of classical new natural law theorists, and, therefore, What is Marriage does not remain neutral on the question of whether homosexuality is moral. First, I give an overview of some cl…Read more
  •  61
    Kant on the Emotion of Love
    European Journal of Philosophy 24 (3): 580-606. 2016.
    Although recent Kant scholarship has focused on Kant's treatment of various emotions, one that has not received much attention is love. There are three main reasons for this. First, Kant does not have a single, sustained analysis of the emotion of love; what he does say appears scattered throughout his corpus. Second, Kant identifies a number of different kinds of love, and it is not always clear which kinds are emotions or how the different kinds of love are related. Finally, in general Kant is…Read more
  •  58
    Natural Goodness, Sex, and the Perverted Faculty Argument
    Philosophy 97 (1): 115-142. 2022.
    There is a longstanding and widely held view, often associated with Catholicism, that intrinsically nonprocreative human sex acts are intrinsically immoral. Some philosophers who hold this view, such as Edward Feser, claim that they can defend the view on purely philosophical grounds by relying on the perverted faculty argument. This paper argues that Feser's defense of the perverted faculty argument does not work because Feser fails to recognize the full implications of the species-dependence o…Read more
  •  41
    Husserl’s Phenomenology (review)
    International Philosophical Quarterly 43 (4): 539-541. 2003.
  •  41
    Specter's of the Humean self
    Philosophy Today 47 (5): 79-88. 2003.
  •  33
    Kant’s Theory of Taste (review)
    The Owl of Minerva 36 (1): 43-51. 2004.
  •  29
    Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: An Orientation to the Central Theme (review)
    International Philosophical Quarterly 46 (1): 129-130. 2006.
  •  19
    Understanding Phenomenal Consciousness (review)
    International Philosophical Quarterly 45 (2): 277-278. 2005.
  •  12
    Kant
    International Philosophical Quarterly 45 (4): 560-562. 2005.
  •  2
    This book defends the thesis that Kant's normative ethics and his practical ethics of sex and marriage can be valuable resources for people engaged in the contemporary debate over same-sex marriage. It does so by first developing a reading of Kant's normative ethics that explains the way in which Kant's notions of human moral imperfection unsocial sociability inform his ethical thinking. The book then offers a systematic treatment of Kant's views of sex and marriage, arguing that Kant's views ar…Read more