Kyla Ebels-Duggan

I work on contemporary issues in moral and political philosophy, and on the history of these fields, within a broadly Kantian tradition. I am interested in how to understand our entitlement to, and responsibility for, acting on our own normative judgments on the one hand, and our dependence on, and reasons for deferring to, others’ judgments on the other. In early work I addressed these questions as they arise in political contexts and in interpersonal relationships of love.

More recently, I published a series of articles concerning related issues about moral education. I consider several aspects of this topic, including how to understand individual responsibility in the face of failed moral education, the proper role of the state in moral education, and the sense in which educators ought to aim to foster autonomy in their students. I am a senior fellow at the Center for Ethics and Education.

I am currently working on several articles and a book manuscript concerned with how to understand the reasons that we have for valuing people and things. I argue that we cannot reason to, but nevertheless do have reasons for our valuing attitudes. Among these valuing attitudes I include interpersonal love and also commitment to the authority of morality or moral respect for persons. I explicate the nature of the reasons that we can have for these sorts of attitudes, and explore the implications for moral education and child-rearing, interpersonal relationships, and politics in a pluralistic society.