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12Passive Corruption: How Institutions Corrupt PeopleRivista Italiana di Filosofia Politica 4 37-57. 2023.This paper questions the claim, advanced persuasively by Emanuela Ceva and Maria Paola Ferretti, that political corruption should primarily be understood as a “deficit of office accountability.” On the one hand, it identifies some ambiguities internal to their theory; these suggest that it underestimates the role of self-serving motives in corruption and overemphasizes the perversion of institutional mandates. On the other hand, it describes a form of “passive corruption” that their theory canno…Read more
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7Mutual Respect and Civic EducationIn Mitja Sardoc (ed.), Toleration, Respect and Recognition in Education, Wiley-blackwell. 2010.This chapter contains sections titled: Hypocrisy? A Trojan Horse? Assessing the Postmodern Objection Civic Education versus Education? Notes References.
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17Human Dignity and Political CriticismCambridge University Press. 2021.Many, including Marx, Rawls, and the contemporary 'Black Lives Matter' movement, embrace the ambition to secure terms of co-existence in which the worth of people's lives becomes a lived reality rather than an empty boast. This book asks whether, as some believe, the philosophical idea of human dignity can help achieve that ambition. Offering a new fourfold typology of dignity concepts, Colin Bird argues that human dignity can perform this role only if certain traditional ways of conceiving it a…Read more
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20Coercion and public justificationPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 13 (3): 189-214. 2014.According to recently influential conceptions of public reasoning, citizens have the right to demand of each other ‘public justifications’ for controversial political action. On this view, only arguments that all reasonable citizens can affirm from within their diverse ethical standpoints can count as legitimate justifications for political action. Both proponents and critics often assume that the case for this expectation derives from the special justificatory burden created by the systematical…Read more
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38Book Review: Liberalism with Excellence, by Matthew Kramer (review)Political Theory 47 (2): 286-293. 2019.
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14Book ReviewsRaymond Geuss,. History and Illusion in Politics.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. 175. $55.00 (review)Ethics 113 (4): 879-882. 2003.
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15Mutual Respect and Civic EducationEducational Philosophy and Theory 42 (1): 112-128. 2010.Contemporary theories of civic education frequently appeal to an ideal of mutual respect in the context of ethical, ethical and religious disagreement. This paper critically examines two recently popular criticisms of this ideal. The first, coming from a postmodern direction, charges that the ideal is hypocritical in its effort to be maximally impartial and fair. The second, which I associate with such ‘new atheists’ as Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, argues that notions of mutual respect pose a…Read more
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The Myth of Liberal Individualism: Conceptions of Collectivity and Social Agency in Contemporary Liberal TheoryDissertation, Columbia University. 1997.This dissertation is concerned with the notion of 'liberal individualism' which has served as an important organizing assumption in recent and contemporary debates about liberalism in the Anglo-American tradition. It focuses on, and rejects, two assumptions central to the idea of 'liberal individualism.' The first assumption is that there is some theoretical methodology of 'individualism' which distinguishes the liberal tradition of political theory from its historical competitors. The dissertat…Read more
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The Possibility of Self-GovernmentAmerican Political Science Review 94 (3): 563-577. 2000.M z ,f any have suggested that the findings of social choice theory demonstrate that there can be no "will of the people." This has subversive implications for our intuitive concept of self-government. I explore the relation between the notion of a "social will," that of self-government, and the impossibility theorems of social choice theory. I conclude that although the concept of the social will is essential to that of self-government, the findings of social choice theory do not cast doubt upo…Read more
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102An Introduction to Political PhilosophyCambridge University Press. 2006.Providing a comprehensive introduction to political philosophy, this 2006 book combines discussion of historical and contemporary figures, together with numerous real-life examples. It ranges over an unusually broad range of topics in the field, including the just distribution of wealth, both within countries and globally; the nature and justification of political authority; the meaning and significance of freedom; arguments for and against democratic rule; the problem of war; and the grounds fo…Read more
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34Why Not Marx?Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 26 (3-4): 259-282. 2014.ABSTRACTTomasi's case for “market democracy” stands or falls, not on its credentials as a genuinely “liberal” argument—a consideration to which he attaches undue importance—but on the plausibility of his arguments about the value of “self-authorship.” Free Market Fairness fails to explain adequately why self-authorship, as Tomasi construes it, is as normatively significant as he thinks it is, and why, even if it has that normative importance, citizens should agree that taking it seriously requir…Read more
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221Coercion and public justificationPolitics, Philosophy and Economics (3): 1470594-13496073. 2013.According to recently influential conceptions of public reasoning, citizens have the right to demand of each other ‘public justifications’ for controversial political action. On this view, only arguments that all reasonable citizens can affirm from within their diverse ethical standpoints can count as legitimate justifications for political action. Both proponents and critics often assume that the case for this expectation derives from the special justificatory burden created by the systematical…Read more
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179Self‐respect and the Respect of OthersEuropean Journal of Philosophy 18 (1): 17-40. 2008.Abstract: This paper examines the claim that agents' self-respect depends on receiving appropriate respect from others. It concentrates on a particular version of the claim defended by Avishai Margalit. The paper argues that Margalit's arguments fail to explain why the rival stoic view, that agents ultimately retain responsibility for their own self-respect, is incorrect.
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74Book review. Social welfare and individual responsibility David Schmidtz Robert E. Goodin (review)Mind 110 (438): 549-552. 2001.
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63Raymond Geuss, History and Illusion in Politics:History and Illusion in PoliticsEthics 113 (4): 879-882. 2003.
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119Dignity as a moral conceptSocial Philosophy and Policy 30 (1-2): 150-176. 2013.Although dignity figures prominently in modern ethical discourse, and in the writings of moral and political philosophers writing today, we still lack a clear account of how the concept of dignity might be implicated in various forms of moral reasoning. This essay tries to make progress on two fronts. First, it attempts to clarify the possible roles the concept of dignity might play in moral discourse, with particular reference to Hart's distinction between positive and critical morality. Second…Read more
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105Status, Identity, and RespectPolitical Theory 32 (2): 207-232. 2004.This essay critically examines the idea that "identity " or "difference " might be proper objects of principles of respect. The author suggests that this idea makes sense only at the cost of the egalitarianism to which its adherents usually subscribe. The essay also shows that liberal interpretations of respect can evade this problem and reaches this conclusion on the basis of an analysis of the concept of respect and its connections with notions of status
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Ethics and Analytic PhilosophyIn Duncan Bell (ed.), Ethics and World Politics, Oxford University Press. 2010.
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72Mutual respect and civic educationEducational Philosophy and Theory 42 (1): 112-128. 2010.Contemporary theories of civic education frequently appeal to an ideal of mutual respect in the context of ethical, ethical and religious disagreement. This paper critically examines two recently popular criticisms of this ideal. The first, coming from a postmodern direction, charges that the ideal is hypocritical in its effort to be maximally impartial and fair. The second, which I associate with such 'new atheists' as Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, argues that notions of mutual respect pose a…Read more
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68Does Religion Deserve Our Respect?Journal of Applied Philosophy 30 (3): 268-282. 2013.This article enumerates several different possible construals of the idea that religion is owed respect. It asks: 1. how religion might be an object of respect; 2. what sorts of respect religion might command; and 3. whose respect might be at stake in complaints about and demands for religious recognition. By distinguishing various ways in which these questions can be interpreted, the discussion aims to introduce some clarity to a notoriously controversial and knotty area of public discussion. A…Read more
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34The Myth of Liberal IndividualismCambridge University Press. 1999.This book challenges us to look at liberal political ideas in a fresh way. Colin Bird examines the assumption, held both by liberals and by their strongest critics, that the values and ideals of the liberal political tradition cohere around a distinctively 'individualist' conception of the relation between individuals, society and the state. He concludes that the formula of 'liberal individualism' conceals fundamental conflicts between liberal views of these relations, conflicts that neither lib…Read more
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University of VirginiaRegular Faculty
Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |