•  248
    Disagreement, Unilateral Judgment, and Kant’s Argument for Rule by Law
    Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 20 (3): 285-309. 2021.
    Kant argues that it is only as citizens of a properly constituted state that persons are able to respect one another’s innate right to freedom, for joint subjection to the authority of a state enables them to avoid what Kantians call “the problem of unilateralism”: when I interact with you in a state of nature according to my judgment of right in circumstances of disagreement between us, I implicitly claim that my judgment, and not yours, has authority over us simply because it is mine. But this…Read more
  •  494
    Kant and the Problem of Unequal Enforcement of Law
    Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 20 (2): 188-210. 2021.
    Kant infamously opposes not only revolution but also any resistance or disobedience by citizens that aims to compel states to reform themselves. This paper argues that, in fact, the Kantian account of the legitimate state has the resources for a distinctive justification of principled disobedience, including even violent or destructive resistance, that applies to citizens of contemporary Western democracies. When a state fails to enforce the law equally, this lack of equal enforcement can depriv…Read more
  •  4
    There is wide agreement that friendship is marked by deep and particularized care for each other. Often this care is understood as practical concern for the friend’s good. And this seems unobjectionable. But things quickly become complicated once we observe that a friend, the object of your care, is herself an agent, someone with her own projects, aims, and relationships that give her reasons for action. Caring for her as the kind of thing she is—as an agent—seems to be not exhausted by a concer…Read more
  •  333
    But I’ve Got My Own Life to Live: Personal Pursuits and the Demands of Morality
    Social Theory and Practice 48 (2): 263-284. 2022.
    The dominant response to Peter Singer’s defense of an extremely demanding duty of aid argues that an affluent person’s duty of aid is limited by her moral entitlement to live her own life. This paper argues that this entitlement provides a basis not for limiting an affluent person’s duty of aid but rather for the claim that she too is wronged by a world marked by widespread desperate need; and the wrong she suffers is a distinctive one: the activation of a duty of aid so demanding that it domina…Read more
  •  1872
    The Principle of Fairness, Political Duties, and the Benefits Proviso Mistake
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 13 (3): 265-293. 2016.
    Recent debate in the literature on political obligation about the principle of fairness rests on a mistake. Despite the widespread assumption to the contrary, a person can have a duty of fairness to share in the burdens of sustaining some cooperative scheme even though that scheme does not represent a net benefit to her. Recognizing this mistake allows for a resolution of the stalemate between those who argue that the mere receipt of some public good from a scheme can generate a duty of fairness…Read more
  •  645
    Vocations, Exploitation, and Professions in a Market Economy
    Social Theory and Practice 44 (3): 323-347. 2018.
    In a market economy, members of professions—or at least those for whom their profession is a vocation—are vulnerable to a distinctive kind of objectionable exploitation, namely the exploitation of their vocational commitment. That they are vulnerable in this way arises out of central features both of professions and of a market economy. And, for certain professions—the care professions—this exploitation is particularly objectionable, since, for these professions, the exploitation at issue is not…Read more
  •  2496
    On the shared-­ends account of close friendship, proper care for a friend as an agent requires seeing yourself as having important reasons to accommodate and promote the friend’s valuable ends for her own sake. However, that friends share ends doesn't inoculate them against disagreements about how to pursue those ends. This paper defends the claim that, in certain circumstances of reasonable disagreement, proper care for a friend as a practical and moral agent sometimes requires allowing her ju…Read more
  •  658
    Normative Consent and Authority
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 10 (3): 255-275. 2013.
    In his recent book Democratic Authority, David Estlund defends a strikingly new and interesting account of political authority, one that makes use of a distinctive kind of hypothetical consent that he calls ‘normative consent’: a person can come to have a duty to obey another when it is the case that, were she given the chance to consent to the duty, she would have a duty to consent to it. If successful, Estlund’s account promises to provide what has arguably so far remained elusive: the basis f…Read more