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35Moral CertaintyPhilosophy 69 (268). 1994.A man has sexual intercourse with his three-year-old niece. Teenagers standing beside a highway throw large rocks through the windshields of passing cars. A woman intentionally drives her car into a child on a bicycle. Cabdrivers cut off ambulances rushing to hospitals. Are these actions wrong? If we hesitate to say yes, that is only because the word ‘wrong’ is too mild to express our responses to such acts
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787Racism in the Head, Racism in the WorldIn William Verna Galston Gehring (ed.), Philosophical Dimensions of Public Policy, . pp. 91-96. 2002.
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40How to judge soldiers whose cause is unjustIn David Rodin & Henry Shue (eds.), Just and Unjust Warriors: The Moral and Legal Status of Soldiers, Oxford University Press. pp. 112--130. 2008.Having learned my just war theory at Michael Walzer’s figurative knee, for many years I accepted the independence of jus in bello from jus ad bellum unthinkingly. Just war theory consists of two separate parts, one concerning the legitimate grounds for going to war and the other the rules of engagement once war had begun. This two-part view, the “independence thesis,” went hand in hand with the “symmetry thesis,” or “the moral equality of soldiers”: soldiers whose cause is unjust have the same r…Read more
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639About AltruismPhilosophy and Public Policy Quarterly 28 (1/2): 2-6. 2008.When people act to aid others, they get something in return—at the very least, the satisfaction of having their desire to help fulfilled. Some conclude from this and other puzzles about motivation that people always act simply to benefit themselves. But this is an error: there is altruism in the world, although it is often inextricably linked with the well-being of the agent who does good
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6Leveling the Playing Field: Justice, Politics, and College AdmissionsRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2004.Leveling the Playing Field examines the admissions policies of contemporary American colleges and universities in light of the assumption that enhancing the educational opportunities of lower-income and minority students would make American society more just. The book evaluates controversies about such issues as the nature of merit, the missions of universities, affirmative action, the role of standardized tests, legacy preference, early decision, financial aid, the test-prep industry, and athle…Read more
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14What Is Charity?Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly 29 (3/4): 16. 2009.Once revered as the greatest of the classic theological virtues, charity now has something of a bad rap. Can it be rehabilitated with help from the Jewish sage Maimonides?
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15Oughts and CansPhilosophical Topics 38 (1): 123-142. 2010.Many philosophers argue that reasonably well-off people have very demanding moral obligations to assist those living in dire poverty. I explore the relevance of demandingness to determining moral obligation, challenging the view that “morality demands what it demands” and that if we cannot live up to its demands that’s our problem, not morality’s. I argue that not only for practical reasons but also for moral-theoretical ones, the language of duty, obligation, and requirement may not be well-sui…Read more
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27Distant Strangers: Ethics, Psychology, and Global PovertyCambridge University Press. 2014.Debate about the responsibilities of affluent people to act to lessen global poverty has dominated ethics and political philosophy for forty years. But the controversy has reached an impasse, with the main approaches either demanding too much of ordinary mortals or else letting them off the hook. In Distant Strangers I show how a preoccupation with standard moral theories and with the concepts of duty and obligation have led philosophers astray. I argue that there are serious limits to what can …Read more
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40Truth, Neutrality, and Conflict of InterestBusiness and Professional Ethics Journal 9 (1-2): 65-78. 1990.
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1Are There Any Basic Rights?In Charles R. Beitz & Robert E. Goodin (eds.), Global Basic Rights, Oxford University Press. 2009.
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52Who’s Responsible For Global Poverty?Teaching Ethics 16 (1): 1-15. 2016.This paper has two aims. The first is to describe several sources of the moral responsibility to remedy or alleviate global poverty. The second is to consider what sorts of agents bear the responsibilities associated with each source—in particular, whether they are collective agents like states or societies or individual human beings. We often talk about our responsibilities to poor people, or what we owe them. So the question is who this we is. I argue that the answer depends on the source of t…Read more
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2The Moral Equivalence of Action and OmissionCanadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 8 (n/a): 19. 1982.
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486Foundations and limits of freedom of the pressPhilosophy and Public Affairs 16 (4): 329-355. 1987.
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The Ethics of Consumption: DvdMilk Bottle Productions. 2002.In a hyper-consuming society, what questions should we ask ourselves as we survey the increasingly crowded planet on which we find ourselves? What are the moral effects of living amid unprecedented material plenty? With David Crocker, Lisa Newton, and Judith Lichtenberg
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11War After September 11Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2002.War After September 11 considers the just aims and legitimate limits of the United States' response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001
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2173What are codes of ethics for?In Margaret Coady & Sidney Bloch (eds.), Codes of ethics and the professions, Melbourne University Press. pp. 13--27. 1996.
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Some central problems in just war theoryIn R. Joseph Hoffmann (ed.), The Just War and Jihad, Prometheus Press. pp. 15. 2006.
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21Nationalism, for and (mainly) againstIn Robert McKim & Jeff McMahan (eds.), The Morality of Nationalism, Oxford University Press. pp. 158-75. 1997.To many people, the very idea of nationalism smacks of ethnocentrism or even racism. They suspect that violence, hatred, and distrust of the Other, embodied in a sharply divided world of "us" and "them," always lurk within the nationalist's heart. Recent world events have done nothing to allay these suspicions. Nationalism, on this view, is an evil to be overcome by a cosmopolitan stance that denies the significance of national boundaries. Yet positive values have also been associated with the n…Read more
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22Book Review:The Virtuous Journalist. Stephen Klaidman, Tom L. Beauchamp (review)Ethics 98 (4): 861-. 1988.
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37The Moral Equivalence of Action and OmissionCanadian Journal of Philosophy 12 (sup1): 19-36. 1982.
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723Responsibility for Global PovertyIn Claus Janina Ludger Langbehn Sombetzki Heidbrink (ed.), Handbook of Responsibility, Springer. forthcoming.This paper has two aims. The first is to describe several sources of the moral responsibility to remedy or alleviate global poverty—reasons why an agent might have such a responsibility. The second is to consider what sorts of agents bear the responsibilities associated with each source—in particular, whether they are collective agents like states, societies, or corporations, on the one hand, or individual human beings on the other. We often talk about our responsibilities to the poorest people …Read more
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Law |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |