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50Cluster Introduction: Mary Wollstonecraft: Philosophy and EnlightenmentHypatia 29 (4): 906-907. 2014.
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10Revisiting ancient and modern liberty: On de Dijn’s Freedom: An Unruly HistoryEuropean Journal of Political Theory 21 (1): 197-207. 2022.Annelien de Dijn’s Freedom: An Unruly History is a rich and thought-provoking work in intellectual history, tracing thinking and debating about political freedom in the West from ancient Greece to our own times. The ancient notion of freedom as self-government is referred to as the ‘democratic conception’. The argument is that this conception survived through the renaissance, the early-modern period and the 18th-century Atlantic revolutions only to be deliberately scrapped in the 19th century in…Read more
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47Why Limitarianism Fails on its Own Premises – an Egalitarian CritiqueEthical Theory and Moral Practice 25 (5): 777-791. 2022.This article is a critical analysis of Ingrid Robeyns’ “economic limitarianism” (2017, 2019, 2022), the suggestion that there is a moral case against allowing people to be richer than they need to be in order to achieve full flourishing. Wealth above a certain “riches line” lacks value and should be capped at that level. Robeyns claims that limitarianism is justified as a partial theory of economic justice, since vast wealth is a threat to political equality and the revenue raised from taxing we…Read more
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17Revisiting ancient and modern liberty: On de Dijn’s Freedom: An Unruly HistorySage Publications: European Journal of Political Theory 21 (1): 197-207. 2021.European Journal of Political Theory, Volume 21, Issue 1, Page 197-207, January 2022. Annelien de Dijn’s Freedom: An Unruly History is a rich and thought-provoking work in intellectual history, tracing thinking and debating about political freedom in the West from ancient Greece to our own times. The ancient notion of freedom as self-government is referred to as the ‘democratic conception’. The argument is that this conception survived through the renaissance, the early-modern period and the 18t…Read more
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9De Grouchy, Wollstonecraft, and Smith on Sympathy, Inequality, and RightsAustralasian Philosophical Review 3 (4): 381-391. 2019.This article offers an analysis of Sophie de Grouchy’s Letters on Sympathy [1798]. The focus is on the republican implications of her views on sympathy, with comparisons to Adam Smith and Mary Wollstonecraft. Critical attention is paid to claims made on de Grouchy’s behalf that her philosophy is republican and that she offers republican arguments for gender and class equality. These claims are made by Sandrine Bergès [2021] in ‘Revolution and Republicanism: Women Political Philosophers of Late E…Read more
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37Feminist RepublicanismIn Sandrine Bergès, Eileen Hunt Botting & Alan Coffee (eds.), The Wollstonecraftian Mind, . 2019.In this chapter it is argued that Mary Wollstonecraft’s political is best characterized as ‘feminist republicanism’. Wollstonecraft’s feminism challenges republicanism from within. The republican movement used the language of rights and liberty in arguments for popular sovereignty and against despotic and aristocratic privilege. Wollstonecraft articulated her feminism within and against this movement, which argued for the rights of all while taking for granted that ‘all’ is properly represented …Read more
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16Political TheoryIn Nancy E. Johnson & Paul Keen (eds.), Mary Wollstonecraft in Context, . pp. 182-188. 2020.Is there a political theory in Mary Wollstonecraft’s writings? The question is relevant since Wollstonecraft’s main preoccupation was moral rather than political: the duty of every thinking person to strive to make themselves as good as they can be. This is a complex duty, involving independent thought, acting on principles of reason, and making oneself useful to others. The challenge involved in this endeavor is a recurrent theme in most of what she wrote. The idiosyncrasies of Wollstonecraft’s…Read more
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21De Grouchy, Wollstonecraft, and Smith on Sympathy, Inequality, and RightsAustralian Philosophical Review. forthcoming.This article offers an analysis of Sophie de Grouchy’s Letters on Sympathy [1798]. The focus is on republican implications of her views on sympathy, with comparisons to Adam Smith and Mary Wollstonecraft. Critical attention is paid to claims made on de Grouchy’s behalf that her philosophy is republican and that she offers republican arguments for gender and class equality. These claims are made by Sandrine Bergès in Revolution and Republicanism: Women Political Philosophers of Late Eighteenth-Ce…Read more
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23Mary WollstonecraftIn Mortimer Sellers & Stephan Kirste (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, Springer. forthcoming.Encyclopedic entry on Mary Wollstonecraft's social and political philosophy.
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18Neo-Roman Liberty in the Philosophy of Human RightsIn Hannah Dawson & Annelien de Dijn (eds.), Rethinking Liberty Before Liberalism, Cambridge University Press. forthcoming.It is my contention here that Quentin Skinner’s conception of neo-roman liberty as it is articulated in Liberty Before Liberalism serves to establish two normative premises for human rights philosophy. Those premises are, first, that human rights should offer the strongest protection for those persons who are most vulnerable and liable to social and political discrimination and marginalisation. Second, the objects of human rights should be conceptualised in terms of open-ended goals of justice, …Read more
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74Mary Wollstonecraft’s Feminist RepublicanismIn Sandrine Berges, Alan M. S. J. Coffee & Eileen Hunt Botting (eds.), The Wollstonecraftian Mind, Routledge. forthcoming.In this chapter it is argued that Mary Wollstonecraft’s political is best characterized as ‘feminist republicanism’. Wollstonecraft’s feminism challenges republicanism from within. The republican movement used the language of rights and liberty in arguments for popular sovereignty and against despotic and aristocratic privilege. Wollstonecraft articulated her feminism within and against this movement, which argued for the rights of all while taking for granted that ‘all’ is properly represented …Read more
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12Mary Wollstonecraft’s political theoryIn Nancy Johnson & Paul Keen (eds.), Mary Wollstonecraft in Context, Cambridge University Press. forthcoming.Is there a political theory in Mary Wollstonecraft’s writings? The question is relevant since Wollstonecraft’s main preoccupation was moral rather than political: the duty of every thinking person to strive to make themselves as good as they can be. This is a complex duty, involving independent thought, acting on principles of reason, and making oneself useful to others. The challenge involved in this endeavor is a recurrent theme in most of what she wrote. The idiosyncrasies of Wollstonecraft’s…Read more
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22Discrimination and IrrelevanceIn Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Discrimination, Routledge. 2018.This chapter analyses role, usefulness and challenges of invoking “irrelevance” as a deciding factor in an account of what discrimination is, or with what is wrong with it.
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22Freedom Fit for a Feminist? On the Feminist Potential of Quentin Skinner's Conception of Republican FreedomRedescriptions: Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory 17 (1): 86-103. 2014.The aim of this paper is to make it credible that there are feminist reasons for being a republican about freedom. In focus is Quentin Skinner’s conception of republican, or “neo-Roman”, freedom. Republican theory in history has not excelled in making poverty, gender hierarchy, and racism within the republic into main sources of concern. So can there be a radical republican theory of liberty fit for a feminist, to make sense of arbitrary power in the every day life of work, households, and local…Read more
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29Thinking Ahead on Deep Brain Stimulation: An Analysis of the Ethical Implications of a Developing TechnologyAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 5 (1): 24-33. 2014.Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a developing technology. New generations of DBS technology are already in the pipeline, yet this particular fact has been largely ignored among ethicists interested in DBS. Focusing only on ethical concerns raised by the current DBS technology is, albeit necessary, not sufficient. Since current bioethical concerns raised by a specific technology could be quite different from the concerns it will raise a couple of years ahead, an ethical analysis should be sensitiv…Read more
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29Building Blocks of a Republican CosmopolitanismEuropean Journal of Political Theory 9 (1): 12-30. 2010.A structural affinity between republican freedom as non-domination and human rights claims accounts for the relevance of republicanism for cosmopolitan concerns. Central features of republican freedom are its institution dependence and the modal aspect it adds to being free. Its chief concern is not constraint, but the way in which an agent is constrained or not. To the extent I am vulnerable to someone’s dispositional power over me I am not free, even if I am not in fact constrained. Republican…Read more
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44Liberty, Law and Leviathan: Of Being Free from Impediments by ArtificeTheoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 59 (131): 1-20. 2012.The argument in this article is that Hobbes' theory of freedom in Leviathan allows for four ways of being free to act - corporal freedom by nature, freedom from obligation by nature, the freedom to disobey and the freedom of no-rule - each corresponding to a particular absence, some of which make sense only in the civil state. Contrary to what some have claimed, this complexity does not commit Hobbes to an unarticulated definition of freedom in tension with the only one that he explicitly offers…Read more
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86Non-domination and egalitarian welfare politicsEthical Theory and Moral Practice 1 (3): 335-353. 1998.In this article I will do three things: I will argue that solidarity is not necessary for political legitimacy, that non-domination is a strong candidate for legitimacy criterion, and, finally, that non-domination can legitimate the egalitarian welfare state.
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Liberty and its circumstances : a functional approachIn Boudewijn de Bruin & Christopher F. Zurn (eds.), New waves in political philosophy, Palgrave-macmillan. 2009.
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94The primacy of right. On the triad of liberty, equality and virtue in wollstonecraft's political thoughtBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 15 (1). 2007.I argue along the following lines: For Wollstonecraft, liberty is independence in two different spheres, one presupposing the other. On the one hand, liberty is independence in relation to others, in the sense of not being vulnerable to their whim or arbitrary will. Call this social, or political, liberty. For liberty understood in this way, infringements do not require individual instances of interfering. Liberty is lost in unequal relationships, through dependence on the goodwill of a master. …Read more
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29This dissertation argues for an interpretation of liberty in terms of non-domination rather than non-interference, that non-domination can work as an independent criterion of political legitimacy, and that non-domination includes an approximation of equality in socioeconomic goods. In the first part, four theories of liberty and power – those of Kant, Locke, J. S. Mill and H. Taylor, and Wollstonecraft – are analyzed. It is concluded that Locke and Wollstonecraft, and Mill and Taylor partly, but…Read more
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34History plays an important role in the philosophy of human rights, more so than in philosophical discussions on related concepts, such as justice. History tends to be used in order to make it credible that there is a tradition of rights as a moral idea, or an ethical ideal, that transcends national boundaries. In the example that I investigate in this chapter, this moral idea is tightly spun around the moral dignity of the human person. There has been a shift in conceptions of human rights durin…Read more
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44Locke and the Non-ArbitraryEuropean Journal of Political Theory 2 (3): 261-279. 2003.In this article, John Locke's accounts of political liberty and legitimate government are read as expressions of a normative demand for non-arbitrariness. I argue that Locke locates infringements of political liberty in dependence on the arbitrary will of another, whether or not interference or restraint actually takes place. This way Locke is tentatively placed in that tradition of republican thought recently brought to our attention by Pettit, Skinner and others. This reading shifts the focus …Read more
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72Dissecting “Discrimination”Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 14 (4): 455-463. 2005.edited by Tuija Takala and Matti Häyry, welcomes contributions on the conceptual and theoretical dimensions of bioethics
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92Halldenius argues that we should regard Mary Wollstonecraft as a feminist republican, drawing out the implications of reading her in that way for the meaning and role of freedom in Wollstonecraft’s philosophy. Her republicanism directs our attention to the fact that freedom for Wollstonecraft is conceptualized in terms of independence, importantly in two analytically distinct yet heavily interdependent ways. There is a long philosophical tradition of treating moral freedom as an internal phenome…Read more
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2Diane Ravitch and Joseph P. Viteritti, eds., Making Good Citizens. Education and Civil Society Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 23 (3): 210-212. 2003.