•  1
    Book Reviews (review)
    with Kate Kirkpatrick and John H. Gillespie
    Sartre Studies International 29 (1): 90-107. 2023.
    Oliver Gloag, Albert Camus: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 112pp. ISBN: 9780198792970. £8.99 (paperback). Meryl Altman, Beauvoir in Time (Leiden: Brill, 2020), x + 570pp. ISBN: 9789004431201. €142.00 (hardback); ISBN: 9789004431218 (open-access e-book). Alfred Betschart and Juliane Werner (eds), Sartre and the International Impact of Existentialism (London: Palgrave, 2020), 388pp. ISBN: 978-3-030-38481-4. $129.99 (hardback); ISBN: 9783030384845. $129.99 (paper…Read more
  •  16
    In the mid-1940s, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre both argued that a person’s preferences and behaviour are ultimately explained by their projects, which they have chosen and can reject. However, they did not agree on the details. Sartre’s theory of ‘radical freedom’ was that projects have no inertia of their own and persist only if they continue to be endorsed. Beauvoir held that projects become gradually sedimented with continued endorsement, increasing in both influence and inertia ov…Read more
  •  25
    Transcendental Phenomenology Meets Negritude Poetry
    In T. Storm Heter & Kris Sealey (eds.), Creolizing Sartre, Rowman and Littlefield. forthcoming.
    In the opening lines of ‘Black Orpheus’, written as a preface to an anthology of negritude poetry, Sartre challenges white readers ‘to feel, as I do, the shock of being seen’. Reading this poetry, he thinks, should undermine white people’s presumption of the objectivity of their perspective. Accordingly, the essay itself contradicts two prominent aspects of the philosophy he had so far developed: the idea that poetry could not be politically engaged; and the theory of radical freedom. These chan…Read more
  • Instilling virtue
    In Alberto Masala & Jonathan Webber (eds.), From Personality to Virtue: Essays on the Philosophy of Character, Oxford University Press Uk. 2016.
  •  12
    Introduction
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 92 1-3. 2022.
  •  15
    Integrity as the Goal of Character Education
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 92 185-207. 2022.
    Schools and universities should equip students with the ability to deal with an unpredictable environment in ways that promote worthwhile and fulfilling lives. The world is rapidly changing and the contours of our ethical values have been shaped by the world we have lived in. Education therefore needs to cultivate in students the propensity to develop and refine ethical values that preserve important insights accrued through experience while responding to novel challenges. Therefore, we should a…Read more
  •  7
    Values and Virtues for a Challenging World (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. forthcoming.
  •  13
    Sociality, Seriousness, and Cynicism
    Sartre Studies International 26 (1): 61-76. 2020.
    This article is a clarification and development of my interpretation of Sartre’s theory of bad faith in response to Ronald Santoni’s sophisticated critique, published in this issue. It begins by clarifying Sartre’s conception of a project and explaining his claim that one project is fundamental, thereby elucidating the idea that bad faith is a fundamental project. This forms the groundwork of my responses to Santoni’s critique of my interpretation, which comprises four arguments: Sartre does not…Read more
  •  20
    Existential Flourishing: A Phenomenology of the Virtues (review)
    Philosophical Quarterly 70 (279): 438-440. 2020.
    Existential Flourishing: A Phenomenology of the Virtues. By McMullin Irene.
  •  7
    Automaticity in virtuous action
    In Nancy Snow & Franco Trivigno (eds.), The Philosophy and Psychology of Character and Happiness, Routledge. pp. 75-90. 2014.
  •  9
    Automaticity in virtuous action
    In Nancy Snow & Franco Trivigno (eds.), The Philosophy and Psychology of Character and Happiness, Routledge. pp. 75-90. 2014.
  •  105
    Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology, by SartreJean-Paul, translated by Sarah Richmond. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018. Pp. xlvii + 848.
  •  127
    Sartre’s critique of Husserl
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 28 (1): 155-176. 2020.
    This paper articulates a new understanding of Sartre’s philosophical methodology in his early publications up to and including Being and Nothingness. Through his critique of Husserl across these works, Sartre develops an original and sophisticated variety of transcendental phenomenology. He was attracted to Husserl’s philosophy for its promise to establish the foundations of empirical psychology but ultimately concluded that it could not fulfil this promise. Through the analyses that led him to …Read more
  •  150
    Rethinking Existentialism
    Oxford University Press. 2018.
    Jonathan Webber articulates an original interpretation of existentialism as the ethical theory that human freedom is the foundation of all other values. Offering an original analysis of classic literary and philosophical works published by Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Frantz Fanon up until 1952, Webber's conception of existentialism is developed in critical contrast with central works by Albert Camus, Sigmund Freud, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Presenting his arguments in an accessibl…Read more
  •  53
    The first phase of Sartre’s philosophical publications is marked by an apparent ambivalence towards Husserl’s transcendental turn. Sartre accepts both major aspects of that turn, the phenomenological reduction and the use of transcendental argumentation. Yet his rejection of the transcendental ego that Husserl derives from this transcendental turn overlooks an obvious transcendental argument in favour of it. His books on emotion and imagination, moreover, make only very brief comments about the …Read more
  •  213
    Character, attitude and disposition
    European Journal of Philosophy 23 (4): 1082-1096. 2015.
    Recent debate over the empirical psychological presuppositions of virtue ethics has focused on reactive behavioural dispositions. But there are many character traits that cannot be understood properly in this way. Such traits are well described by attitude psychology. Moreover, the findings of attitude psychology support virtue ethics in three ways. First, they confirm the role of habituation in the development of character. Further, they show virtue ethics to be compatible with the situation ma…Read more
  •  225
    Certain recent experiments are often taken to show that people are far more likely to classify a foreseen side-effect of an action as intentional when that side-effect has some negative normative valence. While there is some disagreement over the details, there is broad consensus among experimental philosophers that this is the finding. We challenge this consensus by presenting an alternative interpretation of the experiments, according to which they show that a side-effect is classified as inte…Read more
  •  93
    Character, consistency, and classification
    Mind 115 (459): 651-658. 2006.
    John Doris has recently argued that since we do not possess character traits as traditionally conceived, virtue ethics is rooted in a false empirical presupposition. Gopal Sreenivasan has claimed, in a paper in Mind, that Doris has not provided suitable evidence for his empirical claim. But the experiment Sreenivasan focuses on is not one that Doris employs, and neither is it relevantly similar in structure. The confusion arises because both authors use the phrase ‘cross-situational consistency’…Read more
  •  105
    Sartre's Theory of Character
    European Journal of Philosophy 14 (1): 94-116. 2006.
    Various influential ethical theories propose that we should strive to develop morally sound character traits, either because good actions are those that issue from good character traits, or because good traits are those that generally incline us toward actions that are good for some independent reason such as the intentions with which they are performed or the consequences of performing them. This proposal obviously raises questions about the nature and origins of character traits, and our degre…Read more
  •  166
    Doing Without Representation: Coping with Dreyfus
    Philosophical Explorations 5 (1): 82-88. 2002.
    Hubert Dreyfus argues that the traditional and currently dominant conception of an action, as an event initiated or governed by a mental representation of a possible state of affairs that the agent is trying to realise, is inadequate. If Dreyfus is right, then we need a new conception of action. I argue, however, that the considerations that Dreyfus adduces show only that an action need not be initiated or governed by a conceptual representation, but since a representation need not be conceptual…Read more
  •  231
    Philosophers have recently argued that we should revise our understanding of character. An individual's behaviour is governed not by a set of ‘global’ traits, each elicited by a certain kind of situational feature, they argue, but by a much larger array of ‘local’ traits, each elicited by a certain combination of situational features. But the data cited by these philosophers support their theory only if we conceive of traits purely in terms of stimulus and response, rather than in the more tradi…Read more
  •  71
    A law unto oneself
    Philosophical Quarterly 62 (246): 170-189. 2012.
    We should understand the concept of self-legislation that is central to Kant's moral philosophy not in terms of the enactment of statute, but in terms of the way in which judges make law, by setting down and refining precedent through particular judgements. This paper presents a descriptive model of agency based on self-legislation so understood, and argues that we can read Kant's normative ethics as based on this view of agency. It is intended to contribute to contemporary debates in moral psyc…Read more
  •  237
    Sex
    Philosophy 84 (2): 233-250. 2009.
    The sexual domain is unified only by the phenomenal quality of the occurrence of the desires, activities, and pleasures it includes. There is no conceptual restriction on the range of intentional objects those desires, activities, and pleasures can take. Neither is there good conceptual reason to privilege any class of them as paradigmatic. Since the quality unifying the sexual is not morally significant, the morality of sexuality is no different from morality in general. The view that participa…Read more
  •  45
    Virtue and Vice in the Hurt Locker
    Dialogue (37). 2011.
    Much of the critical praise for the film concerns the first of these aims. Bigelow’s use of at least four film crews for every scene affords the sense of being present in the situation, continuously shifting perspective, alert to possible danger. The relative anonymity of the scenery, clearly somewhere in the Middle East but not clearly anywhere in particular, fosters this uneasy sense of immersion in an unfamiliar scenario where the sources of danger are unpredictable. Protracted periods of sil…Read more
  •  75
    Reconstructing Alfie
    The Philosophers' Magazine (47): 61-66. 2009.
    Good stories tend to get told and retold, over and over again, mutating in the process. They adapt to different times and places, taking on and sloughing off embellishments as they are handed on. They persist through a kind of evolution. This is how it has always been and how it must be. Tales cannot survive otherwise. But this does not mean that all mutations are equally acceptable. For critical discussion is part of the environment in which stories survive. So it is not misplaced to criticise …Read more
  •  43
    Green-blooded passion
    The Philosophers' Magazine 43 113-114. 2008.
  •  10
    Character
    The Philosophers' Magazine 50 112-113. 2010.
  •  113
    Habituation and first-person authority
    In Roman Altshuler & Michael Sigrist (eds.), Time and the Philosophy of Action, Routledge. 2016.
    Richard Moran’s theory of first-person authority as the agential authority to make up one’s own mind rests on a form of mind-body dualism that does not allow for habituation as part of normal psychological functioning. We have good intuitive and empirical reason to accept that habituation is central to the normal functioning of desire. There is some empirical support for the idea that habituation plays a parallel role in belief. In particular, at least one form of implicit bias seems better unde…Read more