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2565What Normative Facts Should Political Theory Be About? Philosophy of Science meets Political LiberalismIn David Sobel, Steven Wall & Peter Vallentyne (eds.), Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 185-220. 2018.Just as different sciences deal with different facts—say, physics versus biology—so we may ask a similar question about normative theories. Is normative political theory concerned with the same normative facts as moral theory or different ones? By developing an analogy with the sciences, we argue that the normative facts of political theory belong to a higher— more coarse-grained—level than those of moral theory. The latter are multiply realizable by the former: competing facts at the moral leve…Read more
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2236Ideal vs. Non‐ideal Theory: A Conceptual Map (review)Philosophy Compass 7 (9): 654-664. 2012.This article provides a conceptual map of the debate on ideal and non‐ideal theory. It argues that this debate encompasses a number of different questions, which have not been kept sufficiently separate in the literature. In particular, the article distinguishes between the following three interpretations of the ‘ideal vs. non‐ideal theory’ contrast: (i) full compliance vs. partial compliance theory; (ii) utopian vs. realistic theory; (iii) end‐state vs. transitional theory. The article advances…Read more
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1889On the apparent paradox of ideal theoryJournal of Political Philosophy 17 (3): 332-355. 2008.No Abstract
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1480Egalitarian challenges to global egalitarianism: a critiqueReview of International Studies 35 485-512. 2009.Many political theorists defend the view that egalitarian justice should extend from the domestic to the global arena. Despite its intuitive appeal, this ‘global egalitarianism’ has come under attack from different quarters. In this article, we focus on one particular set of challenges to this view: those advanced by domestic egalitarians. We consider seven types of challenges, each pointing to a specific disanalogy between domestic and global arenas which is said to justify the restriction of e…Read more
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1142The Methodology of Political TheoryIn Herman Cappelen, Tamar Gendler & John P. Hawthorne (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology, Oxford University Press. 2016.This article examines the methodology of a core branch of contemporary political theory or philosophy: “analytic” political theory. After distinguishing political theory from related fields, such as political science, moral philosophy, and legal theory, the article discusses the analysis of political concepts. It then turns to the notions of principles and theories, as distinct from concepts, and reviews the methods of assessing such principles and theories, for the purpose of justifying or crit…Read more
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1057" Measuring Justice: Primary Goods and Capabilities," Harry Brighouse and Ingrid Robeyns, eds. (review)Ethics and International Affairs 25 (1). 2011.
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953Global Justice and the Role of the State: A Critical SurveyIn Thom Brooks (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Global Justice, . 2020.Reference to the state is ubiquitous in debates about global justice. Some authors see the state as central to the justification of principles of justice, and thereby reject their extension to the international realm. Others emphasize its role in the implementation of those principles. This chapter scrutinizes the variety of ways in which the state figures in the global-justice debate. Our discussion suggests that, although the state should have a prominent role in theorizing about global justic…Read more
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891On the meta-ethical status of constructivism: Reflections on G.A. Cohen's `facts and principles'Politics, Philosophy and Economics 7 (4): 403-422. 2008.The Queen's College, Oxford, UK In his article `Facts and Principles', G.A. Cohen attempts to refute constructivist approaches to justification by showing that, contrary to what their proponents claim, fundamental normative principles are fact- in sensitive. We argue that Cohen's `fact-insensitivity thesis' does not provide a successful refutation of constructivism because it pertains to an area of meta-ethics which differs from the one tackled by constructivists. While Cohen's thesis concerns t…Read more
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826Global Justice and Practice‐Dependence: Conventionalism, Institutionalism, FunctionalismJournal of Political Philosophy 19 (4): 399-418. 2010.
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812Respect for persons and the moral force of socially constructed normsNoûs 55 (2): 385-408. 2021.When and why do socially constructed norms—including the laws of the land, norms of etiquette, and informal customs—generate moral obligations? I argue that the answer lies in the duty to respect others, specifically to give them what I call “agency respect.” This is the kind of respect that people are owed in light of how they exercise their agency. My central thesis is this: To the extent that (i) existing norms are underpinned by people’s commitments as agents and (ii) they do not conflict wi…Read more
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771Human Rights, Freedom, and Political AuthorityPolitical Theory 40 (5): 573-601. 2012.In this article, I sketch a Kant-inspired liberal account of human rights: the freedom-centred view. This account conceptualizes human rights as entitlements that any political authority—any state in the first instance—must secure to qualify as a guarantor of its subjects' innate right to freedom. On this picture, when a state (or state-like institution) protects human rights, it reasonably qualifies as a moral agent to be treated with respect. By contrast, when a state (or state-like institutio…Read more
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746Proxy Battles in Just War Theory: Jus in Bello, the Site of Justice, and Feasibility ConstraintsIn David Sobel, Peter Vallentyne & Steven Wall (eds.), Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, Volume 3, Oxford University Press. pp. 166-193. 2017.Interest in just war theory has boomed in recent years, as a revisionist school of thought has challenged the orthodoxy of international law, most famously defended by Michael Walzer [1977]. These revisionist critics have targeted the two central principles governing the conduct of war (jus in bello): combatant equality and noncombatant immunity. The first states that combatants face the same permissions and constraints whether their cause is just or unjust. The second protects noncombatants fro…Read more
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714Freedom as IndependenceEthics 126 (4). 2016.Much recent philosophical work on social freedom focuses on whether freedom should be understood as non-interference, in the liberal tradition associated with Isaiah Berlin, or as non-domination, in the republican tradition revived by Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner. We defend a conception of freedom that lies between these two alternatives: freedom as independence. Like republican freedom, it demands the robust absence of relevant constraints on action. Unlike republican, and like liberal fre…Read more
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707A Paradigm Shift in Theorizing About Justice? A Critique of SenEconomics and Philosophy 27 (3): 297-315. 2011.In his recent bookThe Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen suggests that political philosophy should move beyond the dominant, Rawls-inspired, methodological paradigm – what Sen calls ‘transcendental institutionalism’ – towards a more practically oriented approach to justice: ‘realization-focused comparison’. In this article, I argue that Sen's call for a paradigm shift in thinking about justice is unwarranted. I show that his criticisms of the Rawlsian approach are either based on misunderstandings, or…Read more
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701Assessing the global order: justice, legitimacy, or political justice?Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 15 (5): 593-612. 2012.Which standards should we employ to evaluate the global order? Should they be standards of justice or standards of legitimacy? In this article, I argue that liberal political theorists need not face this dilemma, because liberal justice and legitimacy are not distinct values. Rather, they indicate what the same value, i.e. equal respect for persons, demands of institutions under different sets of circumstances. I suggest that under real-world circumstances? characterized by conflicts and disagre…Read more
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626Justice, Disagreement, and DemocracyBritish Journal of Political Science 43 (1): 177-99. 2013.Is democracy a requirement of justice or an instrument for realizing it? The correct answer to this question, I argue, depends on the background circumstances against which democracy is defended. In the presence of thin reasonable disagreement about justice, we should value democracy only instrumentally (if at all); in the presence of thick reasonable disagreement about justice, we should value it also intrinsically, as a necessary demand of justice. Since the latter type of disagreement is perv…Read more
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614Kant, Ripstein and the Circle of Freedom: A Critical NoteEuropean Journal of Philosophy 20 (3): 450-459. 2012.Much contemporary political philosophy claims to be Kant-inspired, but its aims and method differ from Kant's own. In his recent book, Force and Freedom, Arthur Ripstein advocates a more orthodox Kantian outlook, presenting it as superior to dominant (Kant-inspired) views. The most striking feature of this outlook is its attempt to ground the whole of political morality in one right: the right to freedom, understood as the right to be independent of others’ choices. Is Ripstein's Kantian project…Read more
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582Coercion and JusticeAmerican Political Science Review 105 (1): 205-220. 2011.In this article, I develop a new account of the liberal view that principles of justice are meant to justify state coercion, and consider its implications for the question of global socioeconomic justice. Although contemporary proponents of this view deny that principles of socioeconomic justice apply globally, on my newly developed account this conclusion is mistaken. I distinguish between two types of coercion, systemic and interactional, and argue that a plausible theory of global justice sho…Read more
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530No Global Demos, No Global Democracy? A Systematization and CritiquePerspectives on Politics 12 (4): 789-807. 2014.A globalized world, some argue, needs a global democracy. But there is considerable disagreement about whether global democracy is an ideal worth pursuing. One of the main grounds for scepticism is captured by the slogan: “No global demos, no global democracy.” The fact that a key precondition of democracy—a demos—is absent at the global level, some argue, speaks against the pursuit of global democracy. The paper discusses four interpretations of the skeptical slogan—each based on a specific acc…Read more
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506Just War and Global Distributive JusticeIn Pietro Maffettone & David Held (eds.), Global Political Theory. pp. 143-57. 2016.
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491On the Messy “Utopophobia vs Factophobia” ControversyIn Kevin Vallier & Michael Weber (eds.), Political Utopias: Contemporary Debates, Oup Usa. pp. 11-31. 2017.In recent years, political philosophers have been fiercely arguing over the virtues and vices of utopian vs realistic theorizing. Partly due to the lack of a common and consistently used vocabulary, these debates have become rather confusing. In this chapter, I attempt to bring some clarity to them and, in doing so, I offer a conciliatory perspective on the “utopian vs realistic theorizing” controversy. I argue that, once the notion of a normative or evaluative theory is clearly defined and dist…Read more
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466The Case for Ideal TheoryIn Robyn Eckersley & Chris Brown (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of International Political Theory. pp. 664-676. 2018.
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450On Public‐identity DisempowermentJournal of Political Philosophy 30 (4): 462-486. 2021.Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.
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448On the Distinctive Procedural Wrong of ColonialismPhilosophy and Public Affairs 43 (4): 312-331. 2015.
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424The natural duty of justice in non-ideal circumstances: On the moral demands of institution building and reformEuropean Journal of Political Theory 20 (1). 2017.Principles of distributive justice bind macro-level institutional agents, like the state. But what does justice require in non-ideal circumstances, where institutional agents are unjust or do not e...
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409The content-independence of political obligation: What it is and how to test itLegal Theory 24 (2): 135-157. 2018.One of the distinctive features of the obligation to obey the law is its content-independence. We ought to do what the law commands because the law commands it, and not because of the law's content—i.e., the independent merits of the actions it prescribes. Despite its popularity, the notion of content-independence is marked by ambiguity. In this paper, I first clarify what content-independence is. I then develop a simple test—the “content-independence test”—which allows us to establish whether a…Read more
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409In what Sense Are Human Rights PoliticalPolitical Studies 60 (1): 180-94. 2012.Philosophical discussion of human rights has long been monopolised by what might be called the ‘natural-law view’. On this view, human rights are fundamental moral rights which people enjoy solely by virtue of their humanity. In recent years, a number of theorists have started to question the validity of this outlook, advocating instead what they call a ‘political’ view. My aim in this article is to explore the latter view in order to establish whether it constitutes a valuable alternative to th…Read more
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395Justice, Charity, and Disaster Relief: What, if Anything, Is Owed to Haiti, Japan and New Zealand?American Journal of Political Science 57 (2): 491-503. 2013.Whenever fellow humans suffer due to natural catastrophes, we have a duty to help them. This duty is not only acknowledged in moral theory, but also expressed in ordinary people’s reactions to phenomena such as tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes. Despite being widely acknowledged, this duty is also widely disputed: some believe it is a matter of justice, others a matter of charity. Although central to debates in international political theory, the distinction between justice and charity is ha…Read more
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351Social Samaritan Justice: When and Why Needy Fellow Citizens Have a Right to AssistanceAmerican Political Science Review 109 (4): 735-749. 2015.In late 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast of the U.S., causing much suffering and devastation. Those who could have easily helped Sandy’s victims had a duty to do so. But was this a rightfully enforceable duty of justice, or a non-enforceable duty of beneficence? The answer to this question is often thought to depend on the kind of help offered: the provision of immediate bodily services is not enforceable; the transfer of material resources is. I argue that this double standard is unjust…Read more
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327Cosmopolitan Justice and Rightful EnforceabilityIn Gillian Brock (ed.), Cosmopolitanism versus Non-cosmopolitanism. pp. 92-100. 2013.
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Ludwig Maximilians Universität, MünchenProfessor
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King's College LondonVisiting Professor
Munich, Bayern, Germany
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Law |
Applied Ethics |
Areas of Interest
2 more
Methods in Political Philosophy |
Social Ontology |
Freedom and Liberty |
Global Justice |
Rights |
Democracy |
Legal Authority and Obligation |