•  45
    Private Lives and Public Virtues: The Idea of a Liberal Community
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 28 (4). 1998.
    Ever since Immanuel Kant suggested that ‘the problem of setting up a state can be solved even by a nation of devils’ so long as citizens’ selfish tendencies worked to counterbalance one another, critics have complained that liberalism is indifferent to individual character and, worse still, is predicated on the notion that citizens ought to be concerned primarily with their private interests and little, if at all, with the public weal. Lately, this line of criticism has been pressed with renewed…Read more
  •  43
    Book Notes (review)
    with Kevin A. Ameriks, Tad R. Brennan, Ann E. Cudd, Kirk A. Greer, Bart Gruzalski, John McCumber, Richard Sherlock, and Ira J. Singer
    Ethics 114 (1): 205-212. 2003.
  •  40
    On the validity of remember–know judgments: Evidence from think aloud protocols
    with Lisa Geraci, Jeffrey K. Boman, Amanda E. Sensenig, and Matthew G. Rhodes
    Consciousness and Cognition 20 (4): 1625-1633. 2011.
    The use of remember–know judgments to assess subjective experience associated with memory retrieval, or as measures of recollection and familiarity processes, has been controversial. In the current study we had participants think aloud during study and provide verbal reports at test for remember–know and confidence judgments. Results indicated that the vast majority of remember judgments for studied items were associated with recollection from study , but this correspondence was less likely for …Read more
  •  37
    Modus Vivendi Liberalism: Theory and Practice
    Cambridge University Press. 2010.
    A central task in contemporary political philosophy is to identify principles governing political life where citizens disagree deeply on important questions of value and, more generally, about the proper ends of life. The distinctively liberal response to this challenge insists that the state should as far as possible avoid relying on such contested issues in its basic structure and deliberations. David McCabe critically surveys influential defenses of the liberal solution and advocates modus vi…Read more
  •  26
    Michael Oakeshott and the Idea of Liberal Education
    Social Theory and Practice 26 (3): 443-464. 2000.
  •  25
    Outline for a Defense of an Unreconstructed Liberalism
    Journal of Social Philosophy 29 (1): 63-80. 1998.
  •  15
    National Security, Self-rule, and Democratic Action
    The Journal of Ethics 25 (2): 181-202. 2021.
    Most discussions of the relationship between liberty and security focus on the idea that enhancing citizens’ security may require imposing constraints on their civil liberties. This paper explores the question of how measures to enhance security stand vis à vis the idea of political liberty, i.e. the idea of citizens’ collectively directing the power of their state. It distinguishes two models whereby citizens might enact that ideal of self-rule and argues that with respect to issues of national…Read more
  •  9
    Learning, judgment, and the rooted particular
    Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 11 (3): 313-326. 2012.
    This article begins by acknowledging the general worry that scholarship in the humanities lacks the rigor and objectivity of other scholarly fields. In considering the validity of that criticism, I distinguish two models of learning: the covering law model exemplified by the natural sciences, and the model of rooted particularity that characterizes the humanities. With those two models set forth, I defend the humanities against the general challenge of lack of rigor by showing how objective stan…Read more
  •  9
    [Book review][the tragedy of liberalism] (review)
    Ethics 114 (1): 209-210. 2003.
  •  5
    Modus Vivendi as a Global Political Morality
    In John Horton, Manon Westphal & Ulrich Willems (eds.), The Political Theory of Modus Vivendi, Springer Verlag. pp. 149-167. 2018.
    In recent years a number of political theorists, dissatisfied with what they see as a dominant but wrongheaded approach to political philosophy exemplified in what they call “liberal moralism,” have endorsed a modus vivendi approach as a framework for evaluating political institutions around the globe. In this paper I discuss this approach in the face of a serious challenge that can be raised against it. The challenge is to show that as an approach to global political morality modus vivendi is b…Read more
  •  2
    The Virtues of State Neutrality: A Defense of Liberal Politics
    Dissertation, Northwestern University. 1995.
    In this dissertation I put forth a defense of liberalism understood in terms of the principle of state neutrality. In the first half of the dissertation, I attempt to show that a commitment to state neutrality is a central element running through the liberal tradition. I argue for this by examining closely the liberal theories offered by Locke, Mill, Hobhouse, and Rawls. In the second part, I defend liberal neutrality against two prominent criticisms: first, that it is flawed because it cannot a…Read more