•  4
    On the Relation between Private and Public Right
    In Camilla Serck-Hanssen & Beatrix Himmelmann (eds.), The Court of Reason: Proceedings of the 13th International Kant Congress, De Gruyter. pp. 1855-1866. 2021.
  •  10
    Justice as mutual advantage appears to show inadequate concern for those that are insufficiently useful to others, implying that those that are most in need of the protections of justice fall outside the scope of justice as mutual advantage. Vanderschraaf offers a novel reply to this objection. He presents a game–the Indefinitely Repeated Provider-Recipient Game–which establishes that in some situations justice as mutual advantage can show concern for the vulnerable. This finding, however, does …Read more
  •  2
    Habermas: Nye essays om europæisk og global politik
    Agora Journal for metafysisk spekulasjon 26 (1-2): 404-416. 2008.
  •  3
    Rawls’ forelæsninger om politisk filosofis historie
    Agora Journal for metafysisk spekulasjon 25 (3): 398-413. 2007.
  •  17
    The Injustice of Alienation in advance
    Social Theory and Practice. forthcoming.
  •  26
    The Injustice of Alienation
    Social Theory and Practice 47 (2): 397-424. 2021.
    I articulate and defend a Rousseauvian theory of alienation and argue that thus construed non-alienation is a requirement of justice. On the Rousseauvian account, alienation is a process whereby social and economic conditions produce a particular sort of moral-psychological failure. Alienation is undesirable in itself, but it also makes the alienated person miserable, wicked, and unfree. Since our social and economic conditions are chosen, we should choose those that do not have these undesirabl…Read more
  •  37
    The Principle of Merit and the capital-labour split
    Economics and Philosophy 38 (1): 1-23. 2022.
    Some meritocratic defenders of capitalism rely on the principle that cooperators should receive a share of the product commensurate with their contribution. However, such defences of capitalism fail due to a dilemma. Either they rely on an understanding of contribution that arguably will be reflected by the capital-labour split in suitably idealized capitalist economies, but cannot serve as a plausible standard of merit; or they rely on an interpretation of contribution that is a plausible stand…Read more
  •  7
    Principles of Distributive Justice
    In David Boonin, Katrina L. Sifferd, Tyler K. Fagan, Valerie Gray Hardcastle, Michael Huemer, Daniel Wodak, Derk Pereboom, Stephen J. Morse, Sarah Tyson, Mark Zelcer, Garrett VanPelt, Devin Casey, Philip E. Devine, David K. Chan, Maarten Boudry, Christopher Freiman, Hrishikesh Joshi, Shelley Wilcox, Jason Brennan, Eric Wiland, Ryan Muldoon, Mark Alfano, Philip Robichaud, Kevin Timpe, David Livingstone Smith, Francis J. Beckwith, Dan Hooley, Russell Blackford, John Corvino, Corey McCall, Dan Demetriou, Ajume Wingo, Michael Shermer, Ole Martin Moen, Aksel Braanen Sterri, Teresa Blankmeyer Burke, Jeppe von Platz, John Thrasher, Mary Hawkesworth, William MacAskill, Daniel Halliday, Janine O’Flynn, Yoaav Isaacs, Jason Iuliano, Claire Pickard, Arvin M. Gouw, Tina Rulli, Justin Caouette, Allen Habib, Brian D. Earp, Andrew Vierra, Subrena E. Smith, Danielle M. Wenner, Lisa Diependaele, Sigrid Sterckx, G. Owen Schaefer, Markus K. Labude, Harisan Unais Nasir, Udo Schuklenk, Benjamin Zolf & Woolwine (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy, Springer Verlag. pp. 397-408. 2018.
    What is a just distribution of economic benefits and burdens? Principles of distributive justice help us answer this and related questions about how we should design the economic system. Principles of distributive justice guide our perception and judgment by telling us what facts to care about and when and why these facts reveal justice or injustice in the distribution of some good or burden. Thus, these principles bridge the gap between basic normative categories of right and wrong and facts ab…Read more
  •  40
    Is capitalism compatible with democratic equality? Rawls’s critique of welfare-state capitalism implies a negative answer. I argue that Rawls’s critique fails and that welfare-state capitalism can satisfy the demands of democratic equality. I articulate a social democratic interpretation of the ideal of democratic equality and show that it justifies welfare-state capitalism. This argument also implies that welfare-state capitalism can satisfy the demands of democratic equality as interpreted by …Read more
  •  1
    The Veil of Ignorance in Rawlsian Theory
    In Fathali Moghaddam (ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Political Behavior, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publishing. 2017.
  •  1
    Liberalism and Economic Liberty
    with John Tomasi
    In Steven Wall & Chandran Kukathas (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Liberalism, Cambridge University Press. 2015.
  •  46
    How should we design our economic systems? Should we tax the rich at a higher rate than the poor? Should we have a minimum wage? Should the state provide healthcare for all? These and many related questions are the subject of distributive justice, and different theories of distributive justice provide different ways to think about and answer such questions. This book provides a thorough introduction to the main theories of distributive justice and reveals the underlying sources of our disagreeme…Read more
  •  18
    Justice and the Meritocratic State, written by Thomas Mulligan (review)
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 16 (5): 675-678. 2019.
  • Free Time, Freedom, and Fairness
    Law, Ethics and Philosophy 5 47-62. 2017.
  • Book Review (review)
    Journal of Value Inquiry 43 (1): 97-101. 2009.
  •  9
    Person to Person: A Note on the Ethics of Commodification
    Journal of Value Inquiry 51 (4): 647-653. 2017.
  •  313
    Democratic Rights and the Choice of Economic Systems
    Analyse & Kritik 39 (2): 405-412. 2017.
    Holt argues that Rawls’s first principle of justice requires democratic control of the economy and that property owning democracy fails to satisfy this requirement; only liberal socialism is fully democratic. However, the notion of democratic control is ambiguous, and Holt has to choose between the weaker notion of democratic control that Rawls is committed to and the stronger notion that property owning democracy fails to satisfy. It may be that there is a tension between capitalism and democra…Read more
  •  369
    Person to Person: A Note on the Ethics of Commodification
    Journal of Value Inquiry 51 (4): 647-653. 2017.
  • Book Review (review)
    Journal of Value Inquiry 40 (1): 129-135. 2006.
  •  458
    Negative Perfectionism
    Philosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche 2 (1): 101-122. 2012.
    In this essay I defend a variety of political perfectionism that I call negative perfectionism. Negative perfectionism is the position that if some design of the basic structure of society promotes objectively bad human living, then this should count as a reason against it. To give this hypothetical some bite, I draw on Rousseau’s diagnosis of the maladies of his society to defend two further claims: first, that some human lives are objectively bad, and, second, that some designs of the basic st…Read more
  •  21
    The Ideal of Peace and the Morality of War
    Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 62 (145). 2015.
    According to both common wisdom and long-standing tradition, the ideal of peace is central to the morality of war. I argue that this notion is mistaken, not because peace is unachievable and utopian, though it might be for many of today’s asymmetrical conflicts; nor because the pursuit of peace is counterproductive, though, again, it might be for many of today’s conflicts; the problem, rather, is that the pursuit of peace is not a proper objective of war.