•  617
    The aim of this paper is to show how concern with agency, expressed in the idea that history is the doing of agents, shapes both Kant’s and Hegel’s conceptions of history and, by extension, the roles they accord philosophical historiography.
  •  572
    Autonomy in Bioethics
    Symposion: Theoretical and Applied Inquiries in Philosophy and Social Sciences 3 (2). 2016.
    Autonomy in bioethics is coming under sustained criticism from a variety of perspectives. The criticisms, which target personal or individual autonomy, are largely justified. Moral conceptions of autonomy, such as Kant’s, on the other hand, cannot simply be applied in bioethical situations without moralizing care provision and recipience. The discussion concludes with a proposal for re-thinking autonomy by focusing on what different agents count as reasons for choosing one rather than another co…Read more
  •  545
    Interpretations of Hegel’s social and political thought tend to present Hegel as critic of modern individualism and defender of institutionalism or proto-communitarianism. Yet Hegel has praise for the historically emancipatory role of individualism and gives a positive role to individuals in his discussion of ethics and the state. Drawing on Hegel’s analysis of the category of ‘individual’ in his Logic, this chapter shows that Hegel criticizes the conception of ‘individual’ as a simple and argue…Read more
  •  499
    Hegel's Moral Philosophy
    In Dean Moyar (ed.), Oxford Handbook to Hegel's Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2016.
    Does Hegel have anything to contribute to moral philosophy? If moral philosophy presupposes the soundness of what he calls the 'standpoint of morality [Moralität]' (PR §137), then Hegel's contribution is likely to be negative. As is well known, he argues that morality fails to provide us with substantive answers to questions about what is good or morally required and tends to gives us a distorted, subject-centred view of our practical lives; moral concerns are best addressed from the 'standpoint…Read more
  •  212
    Hegel on Addiction
    Hegel Bulletin 40 (3): 398-424. 2019.
    The aim of this paper is to show how certain distinctive elements of Hegel's theory of action can provide a fresh philosophical perspective on the phenomenon of addiction. What motivates the turn to Hegel is a set of puzzles that arise out of contemporary medical and philosophical discussions of addiction. Starting with questions concerning ongoing attempts to define addiction, the paper examines the resources needed for addiction to be classed as a disorder, as it commonly is. Provisionally set…Read more
  •  206
    The philosopher as legislator: Kant on history
    In The Palgrave Handbook to Kant, Palgrave. pp. 683-704. 2017.
    History plays an important part internally to the Kantian architectonic. In what follows, I argue that Kant’s conception of history as a unified whole presents distinctive features that are illuminating about the critical and moral commitments of his philosophy, and also conversely, that his conception of philosophy makes specific demands that his philosophical history aims to fulfill. The argument is structured around four questions, each of which I take in turn: Why does Kant believe it import…Read more
  •  173
    The 'Ought' and the 'Can'
    Con-Textos Kantianos 8 324-347. 2018.
    Kant's conception of autonomy presents the following problem. If, following Kant's explicit lead, we consider autonomy as the universal principle of morality and ground of the actions of rational beings (e.g. G 4:452), then self-legislation is best understood as a prescription by reason to itself. Applied to individual cases of willing, the term 'autonomy' describes the bringing of a set of practical attitudes under rational legislation. Agents may count as autonomous then, insofar as and only t…Read more
  •  152
    Interest and Agency
    In Anders Moe Rasmussen & Markus Gabriel (eds.), German Idealism Today, De Gruyter. pp. 3-26. 2017.
    (2017) 'Interest and Agency', in Gabriel, Markus and Rasmussen, Anders Moe (eds.) German Idealism Today. De Guyter Verlag. Abstract: Undeterred by Kant’s cautionary advice, contemporary defenders of free will advance substantive metaphysical theses in support of their views. This is perhaps unsurprising given the mixed reception of Kant’s solution of the conflict between freedom and natural necessity, which is supposed to vindicate reason’s withdrawal from speculation. Kant argues that neither…Read more
  •  146
    Appropriately specified, the question, 'why be moral?', addresses important and legitimate topics of a broadly meta-ethical nature. The aim of the paper is to use this question as a dialectical tool, in order to identify the core theoretical commitments of Kant'sethics. Becausewell-foundedworrieshavebeenraised about the question itself, I consider these first. The purpose of this preliminary discussion is to determine the sort of question we are dealing with and to introduce the main topics for …Read more
  •  136
    Freedom and ethical necessity: a Kantian response to Ulrich
    In James A. Clarke & Gabriel Gottlieb (eds.), Practical Philosophy from Kant to Hegel: Freedom, Right, Revolution, Cambridge University Press. 2021.
    The paper starts with outlining the problems of determinism presented in Ulrich's Eleuthériologie and then examines what resources are available to Kant to address these problems. Although the initial focus is historical, one of the aims is to show that the problems with determinism continue to be live problems for those who seek to defend Kant's theory. So the attempt to seek resources in Kant to address these problems will also involve an attempt to offer a diagnosis of what is needed for such…Read more
  •  128
    Aesthetics and Material Beauty: Aesthetics Naturalized (review)
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (3). 2011.
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 89, Issue 3, Page 560-562, September 2011.
  •  106
    I argue that the idea of the good is best understood in terms of a rather unorthodox thesis concerning actuality, namely that what is actual -as opposed to what just is, either spatio-temporally or abstractly- is properly identified as actual if it embodies a value, the value of maximal determinateness.
  •  103
    Aristotelian ethics has the resources to address a range of first as well as second order ethical questions precisely in those areas in which Kantian ethics is traditionally supposed to be weak. My aim in this chapter is to examine some of these questions, narrowing my remit to those concerning the nature of the good and the authority of norms. In particular, I want to motivate and sketch a non-naturalist Kantian response to the neo-Aristotelian challenge that targets specifically its meta-ethic…Read more
  •  101
    Finite Agents, Sublime Feelings: Response to Hanauer
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 74 (2): 199-202. 2016.
    Tom Hanauer's thoughtful discussion of my article “The Pleasures of Contra-purposiveness: Kant, the Sublime, and Being Human” puts pressure on two important issues concerning the affective phenomenology of the sublime. My aim in that article was to present an analysis of the sublime that does not suffer from the problems identified by Jane Forsey in “Is a Theory of the Sublime Possible?”. I argued that Kant's notion of reflective judgment can help with this task, because it allows us to capture …Read more
  •  97
    The idea of the Good
    Hegel Jahrbuch 2019 (1): 117-129. 2019.
  •  93
    The Proper Telos of Life: Schiller, Kant and Having Autonomy as an End
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 54 (5). 2011.
    Abstract In this paper I set the debate between Kant and Schiller in terms of the role that an ideal of life can play within an autonomist ethic. I begin by examining the critical role Schiller gives to emotions in tackling specific motivational concerns in Kant's ethics. In the Kantian response I offer to these criticisms, I emphasise the role of metaphysics for a proper understanding of Kant's position whilst allowing that with respect to moral psychology, Kant and Schiller are in agreement ab…Read more
  •  85
    The Pleasures of Contra‐purposiveness: Kant, the Sublime, and Being Human
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 72 (1): 25-35. 2014.
    Serious doubts have been raised about the coherence of theories of the sublime and the usefulness of the concept. By contrast, the sublime is increasingly studied as a key function in Kant's moral psychology and in his ethics. This article combines methodological conservatism, approaching the topic from within Kant's discussion of aesthetic judgment, with reconstruction of a conception of human agency that is tenable on Kantian grounds. I argue that a coherent theory of the sublime is possible a…Read more
  •  72
    Grace as Guide to Morals? Schiller's Aesthetic Turn in Ethics
    History of Philosophy Quarterly 23 (1). 2006.
    Our philosophical moral vocabulary expresses a predilection for depth; we customarily probe feelings, intentions, reasons for action. Friedrich Schiller's concept of grace offers an alternative: moral guidance is best sought in what we train ourselves to set aside, facial expression, sound of voice, movement. This surprising proposal merits our attention and speaks to some of our current concerns.
  •  59
  •  49
    Bring on the Cavellry (review)
    The Philosophers' Magazine 30 88-88. 2005.
  •  47
    The complacency complaint (review)
    The Philosophers' Magazine 45 (45): 108-109. 2009.
  •  43
    The View From Within. Normativity and the Limits of Self‐Criticism (review)
    Philosophical Quarterly 63 (253): 816-819. 2013.
    © 2013 The Editors of The Philosophical QuarterlyThe aim of this book, set out in the first chapter, is to offer an account of rational action that can accommodate both a model of rationality that is performance‐based and one that is agent‐based. On the former model, rationality is measured in terms of successful performance and amounts to fitness of the performance to the task at hand, so the performance is rational if it does the job it was supposed to do; on the latter, it is a feature of the…Read more
  •  41
    Katerina Deligiorgi offers a contemporary defence of autonomy which is Kantian but engages closely with recent arguments about agency, morality, and practical reasoning.
  •  37
    Religion, Love, and Law: Hegel's Metaphysics of Morals
    In Stephen Houlgate & M. Baur (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Hegel, Blackwell. 2011.
    Hegelian ethics, which gives pride of place to the roles and relations that give substance to our moral life, is seen as a rejection of Kant's a priori treatment of morality, moral law and moral agency. Analysis of the so-called religious writings from the late 1790s to the early 1800s, 'The Positivity of the Christian Religion', the 'Love' fragment, and the essay 'On the Scientific Treatment of Natural Law', shows Hegel engaging profoundly with recognizably Kantian problems of moral metaphysics…Read more
  •  34
    No good guise
    The Philosophers' Magazine 39 91-91. 2007.
  •  27
    Kant, Schiller, and the Idea of a Moral Self
    Kant Studien 111 (2): 303-322. 2020.
    The paper examines Schiller’s argument concerning the subjective experience of adopting a morality based on Kantian principles. On Schiller’s view, such experience must be marked by a continuous struggle to suppress nature, because the moral law is a purely rational and categorically commanding law that addresses beings who are natural as well as rational. Essential for Schiller’s conclusion is the account he has of what it takes to follow the law, that is, the mental states and functions that e…Read more