My research projects are on national self-determination and the morality of punishment. While these two projects sound different, a question that both consider is the justification of rights and their limits. My research on nationalism considers the interests involved in national identity and membership; it investigates the extent to which a national community has a right to govern itself. My research on criminal punishment considers the extent to which a liberal democratic state has a right to punish criminal offenders who violate certain core rights of others. The project that I am working on currently is a monograph that considers the mor…
My research projects are on national self-determination and the morality of punishment. While these two projects sound different, a question that both consider is the justification of rights and their limits. My research on nationalism considers the interests involved in national identity and membership; it investigates the extent to which a national community has a right to govern itself. My research on criminal punishment considers the extent to which a liberal democratic state has a right to punish criminal offenders who violate certain core rights of others. The project that I am working on currently is a monograph that considers the moral justification problem of punishment in a liberal democracy. The criminal justice system uses tax money to fund the institution of punishment. However, punishment typically abridges the rights of offenders and sometimes even imposes harm on them intentionally. How can such an institution be morally justified? How can a democratic government, the primary duty of which is the protection of individual rights, be morally justified in curtailing the rights of offenders? In the literature, this problem is known as the justification problem of punishment. I address this problem by examining the morality of public institutions in a liberal democracy; accordingly, I call it the liberal institutional inquiry. In Part I of the book, I consider the nature of this inquiry and the methods that is adequate to studying it. To address the liberal institutional inquiry, I argue that we must adopt coalitionism and consider how the institution of criminal punishment works with other public institutions in society to protect core individual rights. In Part II of the book, I attempt to address this inquiry. By appealing to a society’s right of self-defense, I argue that the aim of the institution of punishment is to protect the core rights of citizens, and this aim both justifies and constrains the state’s right to punish. Because the state’s right to punish is grounded in its right to protect individual rights, the same moral principles that apply to the right of self-defense also apply to the state’s right to punish. An important implication of my argument is that the principle of proportionality is no longer the ultimate standard with which we should evaluate the morality of punishment. Instead, we must evaluate punishment policies by examining their impact on the rights of citizens. The aim of rights protection leads us to the principle of normality, which holds that the primary aim of punishment is to help offenders lead a crime-free, normal life in the community. Accordingly, we must support programs that aim at helping offenders to rehabilitate and reform. In addition to the Introduction and Conclusion, there are seven chapters in this book and an appendix. Chapter Seven, "Taking Deterrence Seriously—The Wide-Scope Deterrence Theory of Punishment," has been published in Criminal Justice Ethics, and Chapter Four, “A New Societal Self-Defense Theory of Punishment—The Rights-Protection Theory,” has been published in Philosophia—Philosophical Quarterly of Israel. The titles of the other chapters are: “The Moral Justification Problem of Punishment in a Liberal Democracy,” “Philosopher King and His Cave—The Vice of Abstract Moral Reasoning,” “Harm Infliction or Liberty Deprivation? —Why Punishment Requires Justification,” “Self-Defense Theories of Punishment—An Examination from the Perspective of Means-Ends Rationality,” and “Some Bullets are Worth-Biting—Reviving the Utilitarian Theory of Punishment.” In addition to this book manuscript, I have also contributed a chapter titled “Consequentialist Theories of Punishment” to The Palgrave Handbook on Philosophy of Punishment (edited by Matthew Altman). My project on criminal punishment has received funding supports from multiple academic institutions, including the Hayek Fund (Institute for Humane Studies), TOP Grant (Science & Technology Policy Research and Information Center, Taiwan), General Research Fund (University Grants Committee of Hong Kong), and New Faculty Start-Up Grant (City University of Hong Kong). Currently, I am also working on a draft that considers the quality of punishment. Philosophers have been obsessed with the idea of proportionate punishment; this leads them to focus on questions regarding the quantity or the amount of punishment. However, to ensure that the punishment serves the aim of rights protection and crime deterrence, philosophers must also consider the quality of different forms of punishment. In 2016, Professor P. J. Ivanhoe and I co-hosted a conference “The Theory and Practice of Punishment East and West.” Most essays presented there were later revised and published in two special issues of the peer-reviewed journal Criminal Justice Ethics. The very first research project I undertook was my doctoral dissertation entitled National Identity and the Right to Self-Government. In this work, I considered whether interests in national culture, identity, and membership are sufficient to justify the right of a national community to govern itself. I argue that, in a multinational state, membership in a minority nation can undermine the equal distribution of political power and opportunity. Thus, social institutions must be arranged in a way that helps equalize relevant goods. In other words, interests in national identity and culture are sufficient to justify institutional protection. Nonetheless, I go on to argue that the value of national identity is not sufficient to justify a group’s right to self-government, either in the form of an independent sovereign state or an autonomous sub-state government. My thesis is rather unusual. Most philosophers who affirm the value of national identity also endorse some form of national self-government, and most philosophers who deny that a national community has the right to create any form of self-government also deny the value of national identity. Four chapters that represent substantial developments of the ideas first put forth in my dissertation have been published in peer-reviewed journals: “The Instrumental Value Arguments for National Self-Determination” appeared in Dialogue—Canadian Philosophical Review, “Institutional Morality and the Principle of National Self-Determination” was published in Philosophical Studies, “An Examination the Feasibility of Cultural Nationalism as Ideal Theory” appeared in Ethical Perspectives, and “The Identity Argument for National Self-Determination” was published in Public Affairs Quarterly. In November 2014, I organized an international conference on nationalism that I designed in cooperation with my former colleague Dr. Sungmoon Kim entitled Reimaging Nation and Nationalism in Multicultural East Asia. This conference was fully funded by a Conference and Seminar Grant from the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. Essays presented in the conference were revised and later published in the book Reimagining Nation and Nationalism in Multicultural East Asia (Routledge). In addition to the Introduction, which I co-authored with Dr. Kim, I also contributed a chapter titled “In the Name of Equality—An Examination of Equality Arguments for National Self-Government.” Recently, a summary of my view on this topic as well as responses to objections are included in “Cultural Nationalism and Just Secession;” this article is included in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Global Justice and East Asian Philosophy, which I co-edited with Professor Janusz Salamon from Charles University (Czech). In the literature of analytic philosophy, there are many scholarly works on global justice. However, these books consider Western theories of global justice only; none considers non-Western theories and perspectives on relevant issues. Our handbook is the first to take into consideration non-Western views on global ethics. At an earlier stage, we had tried to include scholarly works on Indian perspectives as well. However, it turned out to be too difficult at this stage. Still, we are very proud to have a handbook on global justice that takes seriously a range of global perspectives.