•  1801
    Political realism as ideology critique
    with Enzo Rossi
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 20 (3): 334-348. 2017.
    This paper outlines an account of political realism as a form of ideology critique. Our focus is a defence of the normative edge of this critical-theoretic project against the common charge that there is a problematic trade-off between a theory’s groundedness in facts about the political status quo and its ability to consistently envisage radical departures from the status quo. To overcome that problem we combine insights from three distant corners of the philosophical landscape: theories of leg…Read more
  •  77
    Raymond Geuss’ radicalization of realism in political theory
    Philosophy and Social Criticism 42 (8): 777-796. 2016.
    Raymond Geuss has been viewed as one of the figureheads of the recent debates about realism in political theory. This interpretation, however, depends on a truncated understanding of his work of the past 30 years. I will offer the first sustained engagement with this work which allows understanding his realism as a project for reorienting political theory, particularly the relationship between political theory and politics. I interpret this reorientation as a radicalization of realism in politic…Read more
  •  41
    Principles, practices and disciplinary power struggles in political theory
    European Journal of Political Theory 19 (2): 270-280. 2020.
    The Practical Turn in Political Theory sounds like the monograph political theorists have been waiting for – a monograph that identifies ‘practices’ as a uniting theme that runs through several recently influential debates on non-ideal theory, practice dependence, realism and pragmatist theories of legitimacy and democracy, and then discusses the promise and limits of this uniting theme for the future of political theory. However, The Practical Turn is driven by selective portrayals, omissions a…Read more
  •  36
    Realism and real politics. The gap between promise and practice in Bernard Williams’ realism
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 26 (3): 335-355. 2023.
    This paper seeks to show that Bernard Williams’ approach to legitimacy falls short of its aspirations in ways that cast doubt on its fitness for guiding the practice of future realist political theory. More precisely, the paper focuses on the shortcomings of Williams’ realism in establishing a connection to (the practices of) politics, and on how to redeem those shortcomings in a way that would render them suitable for guiding future realist political theory. The first substantive section of the…Read more
  •  25
    The Tribunate as a Realist Democratic Innovation
    with Manon Westphal
    Political Theory 52 (1): 60-89. 2024.
    We argue that a reinvention of the plebeian tribunate should play a key role in addressing the challenges stemming from increasing concentrations of, and inequalities in, social, political, economic, and cultural power in liberal democracies. Addressing these challenges, which negatively affect parliamentary representation, requires a form of institutional innovation that gives voice to non-elites who are ruled but do not rule. We propose revisions of the composition and tasks of the tribunate t…Read more
  •  16
    A genealogy of politics: Vindicatory, pragmatic, and realist
    European Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    In Western democracies, people harbor feelings of disgust or hatred for politics. Populists and technocrats even seemingly question the value of politics. Populists cry that they are not politicians and that politics is necessarily corrupt. From the opposite side, technocrats view politics as a pointless constraint on enacting the obviously right policies. Are Western democracies facing a rejection of politics? And is politics worth defending? This paper offers a vindicatory genealogy of politic…Read more
  •  6
    Genealogy and political philosophy: introduction to the special issue
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 67 (7): 2081-2083. 2024.
  • Brain embodiment of category-specific semantic memory circuits
    with L. Boroditsky
    In Gün R. Semin & Eliot R. Smith (eds.), Embodied grounding: social, cognitive, affective, and neuroscientific approaches, Cambridge University Press. 2008.
  • Empirical philosophy and experimental philosophy
    Experimental Philosophy. 2008.