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8On the Relation between Private and Public RightIn Camilla Serck-Hanssen & Beatrix Himmelmann (eds.), The Court of Reason: Proceedings of the 13th International Kant Congress, De Gruyter. pp. 1855-1866. 2021.
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Rawls's underestimation of the importance of economic agency and economic rightsIn Sarah Roberts-Cady & Jon Mandle (eds.), John Rawls: Debating the Major Questions, Oup Usa. 2020.
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Social democracyIn Chris Melenovsky (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Routledge. 2022.
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17The silver bullet: justice as mutual advantage and the vulnerability objectionSynthese 200 (2): 1-23. 2022.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
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6Habermas: Nye essays om europæisk og global politikAgora Journal for metafysisk spekulasjon 26 (1-2): 404-416. 2008.
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4Rawls’ forelæsninger om politisk filosofis historieAgora Journal for metafysisk spekulasjon 25 (3): 398-413. 2007.
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31The Injustice of AlienationSocial 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
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49The Principle of Merit and the capital-labour splitEconomics 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
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13Principles of Distributive JusticeIn David Boonin (ed.), Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy, Palgrave Macmillan. 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
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Rawls’s Underestimation of the Importance of Economic Agency and Economic RightsIn Sarah Roberts-Cady & Jon Mandle (eds.), John Rawls: Debating the Major Questions, Oup Usa. 2020.
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51Democratic Equality and the Justification of Welfare-State CapitalismEthics 131 (1): 4-33. 2020.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
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1The Veil of Ignorance in Rawlsian TheoryIn Fathali M. Moghaddam (ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Political Behavior, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publishing. 2017.
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Principles of Distributive JusticeIn David Boonin (ed.), Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy, Palgrave Macmillan. 2018.
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1Liberalism and Economic LibertyIn Philip Cook (ed.), Liberalism, Contractarianism, and the Problem of Exclusion, Cambridge University Press. 2015.
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From Justice to Fairness: Does Kant’s Doctrine of Right Imply a Theory of Distributive Justice?In Kate A. Moran (ed.), Kant on Freedom and Spontaneity, Cambridge University Press. 2018.
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51Theories of Distributive Justice: Who gets what and whyRoutledge. 2020.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
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24Justice and the Meritocratic State, written by Thomas Mulligan (review)Journal of Moral Philosophy 16 (5): 675-678. 2019.
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49Henry E. Allison, Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011 Pp. 432, pbk, $45.00 ISBN: 9780199691548 (review)Kantian Review 18 (2): 317-322. 2013.
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10Person to Person: A Note on the Ethics of CommodificationJournal of Value Inquiry 51 (4): 647-653. 2017.
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8Singularity Without Equivalence: The Complex Unity of Kant’s Categorical ImperativeJournal of Value Inquiry 50 (2): 369-384. 2016.
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367Democratic Rights and the Choice of Economic SystemsAnalyse & 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
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477Person to Person: A Note on the Ethics of CommodificationJournal of Value Inquiry 51 (4): 647-653. 2017.
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369Negative PerfectionismPhilosophy 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
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53Social Cooperation and Basic Economic Rights: A Rawlsian Route to Social DemocracyJournal of Social Philosophy 47 (3): 288-308. 2016.The central idea of Rawls’s theory of justice is the idea of democratic society as a fair system of cooperation between free and equal citizens. The moral powers of democratic citizens are the capacities presupposed by this idea. Rawls identifies two such powers, the capacity for a conception of the good and the capacity for a sense of justice. I argue that the idea of democratic citizenship presupposes also a third moral power: the capacity for working. Since the basic rights are the rights nec…Read more
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31Review: James, David, Rousseau and German Idealism: Freedom, Dependence and Necessity (review)Kantian Review 20 (1): 155-162. 2015.
Richmond, Virginia, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |