Utrecht University
Department for Philosophy and Religious Studies
PhD, 2021
Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
  •  521
    Justice, Thresholds, and the Three Claims of Sufficientarianism
    Journal of Political Philosophy 30 (3): 298-323. 2021.
    In this article, I propose a novel characterization of sufficientarianism. I argue that sufficientarianism combines three claims: a priority claim that we have non-instrumental reasons to prioritize benefits in certain ranges over benefits in other ranges; a continuum claim that at least two of those ranges are on one continuum; and a deficiency claim that the lower a range on a continuum, the more priority benefits in that range have. This characterization of sufficientarianism sheds new light …Read more
  •  429
    Thresholds in Distributive Justice
    Utilitas 33 (4): 422-441. 2021.
    Despite the prominence of thresholds in theories of distributive justice, there is no general account of what sort of role is played by the idea of a threshold within such theories. This has allowed an ongoing lack of clarity and misunderstanding around views that employ thresholds. In this article, I develop an account of the concept of thresholds in distributive justice. I argue that this concept contains three elements, which threshold views deploy when ranking possible distributions. These e…Read more
  •  361
    Limitarianism: Pattern, Principle, or Presumption?
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 38 (5): 760-773. 2021.
    In this article, I assess the prospects for the limitarian thesis that someone has too much wealth if they exceed a specific wealth threshold. Limitarianism claims that there are good political and/or ethical reasons to prevent people from having such ‘surplus wealth’, for example, because it has no moral value for the holder or because allowing people to have surplus wealth has less moral value than redistributing it. Drawing on recent literature on distributive justice, I defend two types of l…Read more
  •  287
    In this paper, I argue that limitarian policies are a good means to further political equality. Limitarianism, which is a view coined and defended by Robeyns, is a partial view in distributive justice which claims that under non-ideal circumstances it is morally impermissible to be rich. In a recent paper, Volacu and Dumitru level two arguments against Robeyns’ Democratic Argument for limitarianism. The Democratic Argument states that limitarianism is called for given the undermining influence c…Read more
  •  255
    Weighted sufficientarianisms: Carl Knight on the excessiveness objection
    Economics and Philosophy 39 (3): 494-506. 2023.
    Carl Knight argues that lexical sufficientarianism, which holds that sufficientarian concerns should have lexical priority over other distributive goals, is ‘excessive’ in many distinct ways and that sufficientarians should either defend weighted sufficientarianism or become prioritarians. In this article, I distinguish three types of weighted sufficientarianism and propose a weighted sufficientarian view that meets the excessiveness objection and is preferable to both Knight’s proposal and prio…Read more
  •  231
    Presumptive Limitarianism: A Reply to Robert Huseby
    In Ingrid Robeyns (ed.), Having Too Much: Philosophical Essays on Limitarianism, Open Book Publishers. pp. 203-218. 2023.
    In earlier work on limitarianism, I argued that setting an upper limit to the amount of wealth that people can permissibly have is justified when decision-makers are unaware of or disagree about the appropriate distributive criterion or if they are unaware of people’s relevant features (or both). Robert Huseby has raised several powerful objections to this presumptive argument for limitarianism. Some of these objections call for a revision of my defence of presumptive limitarianism while others …Read more
  •  222
    Introduction: Symposium Limitarianism: Extreme Wealth as a Moral Problem
    with Christian Neuhäuser
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 25 (5): 717-719. 2022.
    The growing concentration of wealth has acquired a new urgency in recent years. One particular view in this context is developed by Ingrid Robeyns in her ground-breaking work on limitarianism. According to this view, no one should have more than a certain amount of valuable goods, such as income and wealth. The contributors to this symposium, Brian Berkey, David Axelsen and Lasse Nielsen, Jessica Flanigan and Christopher Freiman, and Lena Halldenius, critically examine various aspects of limitar…Read more
  •  219
    The agents of justice
    with Colin Hickey, Tim Meijers, and Ingrid Robeyns
    Philosophy Compass 16. 2021.
    The complexities of how justice comes to be realized, and by which agents, is a relatively neglected element in contemporary theories of justice. This has left several crucial questions about agency and justice undertheorized, such as why some particular agents are responsible for realizing justice, how their contribution towards realizing justice should be understood, and what role agents such as activists and community leaders play in realizing justice. We aim to contribute towards a better un…Read more
  •  155
    On the Idea of Degrees of Moral Status
    Journal of Value Inquiry 1-19. forthcoming.
    A central question in contemporary ethics and political philosophy concerns which entities have moral status. In this article, I provide a detailed analysis of the view that moral status comes in degrees. I argue that degrees of moral status can be specified along two dimensions: (i) the weight of the reason to protect an entity’s morally significant rights and interests; and/or (ii) the rights and interests that are considered morally significant. And I explore some of the complexities that ari…Read more
  •  137
    Wars and crises worldwide force millions of people to flee and seek refuge, often outside their countries of origin. What moral responsibilities do states have towards refugees? In this Ethical Annotation, Dr Jos Philips and his co-authors zoom in on the responsibilities of EU countries. They consider arguments in favour of and against admitting refugees and argue that EU countries must do at least at much as they can do at little cost, and perhaps even more.
  •  135
    We argue that the prudential benefits of long-distance leisure travel can justify such trips even though there are strong and important reasons against long-distance flying. This is because prudential benefits can render otherwise impermissible actions permissible, and because, according to dominant theories about wellbeing, long-distance leisure travel provides significant prudential benefits. However, this ‘wellbeing argument’ for long-distance leisure travel must be qualified in two ways. Fir…Read more
  •  110
    Limitarianism: Pattern, Principle, or Presumption?
    In Ingrid Robeyns (ed.), Having Too Much: Philosophical Essays on Limitarianism, Open Book Publishers. pp. 129-150. 2023.
    In this article, I assess the prospects for the limitarian thesis that someone has too much wealth if they exceed a specific wealth threshold. Limitarianism claims that there are good political and/or ethical reasons to prevent people from having such ‘surplus wealth’, for example, because it has no moral value for the holder or because allowing people to have surplus wealth has less moral value than redistributing it. Drawing on recent literature on distributive justice, I defend two types of l…Read more
  •  57
    Thresholds and Limits in Theories of Distributive Justice
    Dissertation, Utrecht University. 2021.
    Despite the prominence of thresholds and limits in theories of distributive justice, there is no general account of their role within such theories. This has allowed an ongoing lack of clarity and misunderstanding around threshold views in distributive justice. In this thesis, I develop an account of the conceptual structure of such views. Such an account helps understand and characterize threshold views, can subsume what may seem to be different debates about such views under one conceptual hea…Read more
  •  57
    Limitarianism, Upper Limits, and Minimal Thresholds
    Res Publica 1-19. forthcoming.
    Limitarianism holds that there is an upper limit to how many resources, such as wealth and income, people can permissibly have. In this article, I examine the conceptual structure of limitarianism. I focus on the upper limit and the idea that resources above the limit are ‘excess resources’. I distinguish two possible limitarian views about such resources: (i) that excess resources have zero moral value for the holder; and (ii) that excess resources do have moral value for the holder but that th…Read more
  •  13
    Thresholds and Limits in Theories of Distributive Justice (thesis summary)
    Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 15 (1). 2022.
  •  12