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12Procreative Prerogatives and Climate ChangeJournal of Applied Philosophy. forthcoming.One of the most provocative claims in current climate ethics is that we ought to have fewer children, because procreation brings new people into existence and thereby causes large amounts of additional greenhouse gas emissions. The public debate about procreation and climate change is frequently framed in terms of the question of whether people may still have any children at all. Yet in the academic debate it is a common position that, despite the large carbon impact of procreation, it is still …Read more
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11Paul Guyer: Kant’s Impact on Moral Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 2024. ISBN: 9780199592456Kant Studien 115 (4): 545-550. 2024.
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31Kant and Overdemandingness I: The Demandingness of Imperfect DutiesPhilosophy Compass 19 (6). 2024.The Overdemandingness Objection maintains that an ethical theory or principle that demands too much should be rejected, or at least moderated. Traditionally, overdemandingness is considered primarily a problem for consequentialist ethical theories. Recently, Kant and Kantian ethics have also become part of the debate. This development helps us better understand both overdemandingness and problems with Kant's ethics. In this, the first of a pair of papers, we introduce the distinction between per…Read more
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34Working Oneself Up and Universal Basic IncomeKantian Review 29 (2): 239-247. 2024.I respond to a challenge raised by Jordan Pascoe: Kant’s conception of obtaining full citizenship through working oneself up necessarily condemns some people to passive citizenship. I argue that we should not focus on work to establish universal full citizenship. Rather, a Universal Basic Income, an income paid regularly to everyone and without conditions, can secure everyone’s full citizenship. Moreover, I argue that such a scheme is more Kantian in nature than hitherto assumed.
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50Correction to: Kant on the Normativity of Obligatory EndsThe Journal of Ethics 28 (1): 75-76. 2024.
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40Kant on the Normativity of Obligatory EndsThe Journal of Ethics 28 (1): 53-73. 2024.I propose a novel way to understand the stringency of Kant’s conception of beneficence. This novel understanding can ground our intuition that we do not have to forego (almost) all pursuit of our personal ends. I argue that we should understand the application of imperfect duties to specific cases according to the framework set by the adoption and promotion of ends. Agents have other ends than obligatory ones and they must weigh obligatory ends against these other ends. Obligatory ends are speci…Read more
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28Kant and Global Poverty: Guest Editors’ Introduction to Special IssueEthical Theory and Moral Practice 26 (2): 169-175. 2023.
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42A merely national ‘universal’ basic income and global justiceJournal of Political Philosophy 31 (2): 158-176. 2023.Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.
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15Maxims and the Role of Moral PrinciplesIn Camilla Serck-Hanssen & Beatrix Himmelmann (eds.), The Court of Reason: Proceedings of the 13th International Kant Congress, De Gruyter. pp. 1561-1570. 2021.
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14System und Systemkritik – Witz und Ironie als philosophische Methode beim frühen Friedrich SchlegelPhilosophisches Jahrbuch 120 (1): 64-81. 2013.The conceptions of wit and irony of the early Friedrich Schlegel together constitute a philosophically ambitious form of early-romantic dialectic. This dialectic was directed especially against the closed philosophical system of Fichte, and tries to show a third way between the abandonment of a system and a closed system. The result is an open system, which can accommodate historical change and an infinite approach to the absolute. The article discusses the origin of this third way in romantic i…Read more
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23True Need in KantKant Studien 113 (3): 432-458. 2022.A number of influential Kantian philosophers assume that true need represents shared and fundamental human concerns that can both ground duties of aid and limit how much an agent can be morally required to do for others. In this paper, I take on this misreading and argue that true need is representative of personal priorities. This subjectivist reading fits better with Kant’s own characterization of true need and with his conceptions of need and happiness. Moreover, I argue that Kant’s own conce…Read more
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394Why we go wrong: beyond Kant’s dichotomy between duty and self-loveInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 68 (2): 794-825. 2025.Kant holds that whenever we fail to act from duty, we are driven by self-love. In this paper, we argue that there are a variety of different ways in which people go wrong, and we show why it is unsatisfying to reduce all of these to self-love. In doing so, we present Kant with five cases of wrongdoing that are difficult to account for in terms of self-love. We end by suggesting a possible fix for Kant, arguing that he should either accept a pluralistic account of self-love, or move beyond the du…Read more
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74Kant on education and improvement: Themes and problemsJournal of Philosophy of Education 55 (6): 909-920. 2021.Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.
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70Kant on thinking for oneself and with others—the ethical a priori, openness and diversityJournal of Philosophy of Education 55 (6): 949-965. 2021.Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.
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30Owen Ware, Kant’s Justification of Ethics Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021 Pp. 192 ISBN 9780198849933 (hbk), $70.00 (review)Kantian Review 27 (2): 338-341. 2022.
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36Parfit’s Mixed Maxim Objection against the Formula of Universal Law ReconsideredJournal of Value Inquiry 58 (1): 13-32. 2024.
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125Poverty, Exploitation, Mere Things and Mere MeansEthical Theory and Moral Practice 26 (2): 1-17. 2021.I argue that, alongside the already well-established prohibition against treating persons as mere means, Kant’s Formula of Humanity requires a prohibition against treating persons as mere things. The former captures ethical violations due to someone’s (perceived) instrumental value, e.g. exploitation, the latter captures cases in which I mistreat others because they have no instrumental value to me. These are cases in which I am indifferent and complacent towards persons in need; forms of mistre…Read more
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RationalizingCambridge University Press. 2021.Kant was a keen psychological observer and theorist of the forms, mechanisms and sources of self-deception. In this Element, the author discusses the role of rationalizing/Vernünfteln for Kant's moral psychology, normative ethics and philosophical methodology. By drawing on the full breadth of examples of rationalizing Kant discusses, the author shows how rationalizing can extend to general features of morality and corrupt rational agents thoroughly. Furthermore, the author explains the often-ov…Read more
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169The Case against Different-Sex Marriage in KantKantian Review 25 (3): 441-464. 2020.Recently, a number of Kantians have argued that despite Kant’s own disparaging comments about same-sex intercourse and marriage, his ethical and legal philosophy lacks the resources to show that they are impermissible. I go further by arguing that his framework is in fact more open to same-sex than to different-sex marriage. Central is Kant’s claim that marriage requires equality between spouses. Kant himself thought that men and women are not equal, and some of his more insightful remarks on th…Read more
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120Procreation, Footprint and Responsibility for Climate ChangeThe Journal of Ethics 25 (3): 293-321. 2020.Several climate ethicists have recently argued that having children is morally equivalent to over-consumption, and contributes greatly to parents’ personal carbon footprints. We show that these claims are mistaken, for two reasons. First, including procreation in parents’ carbon footprints double-counts children’s consumption emissions, once towards their own, and once towards their parents’ footprints. We show that such double-counting defeats the chief purpose of the concept of carbon footprin…Read more
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17Common Human Reason and the Fact of ReasonIn Violetta L. Waibel, Margit Ruffing & David Wagner (eds.), Natur und Freiheit: Akten des XII. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, De Gruyter. pp. 2191-2198. 2018.
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46Kant, Eudaimonism, Act-Consequentialism and the Fact of ReasonArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 102 (2): 209-241. 2020.Kant considers eudaimonism as his main opponent and he assumes that his ethics is the only viable alternative to eudaimonism. He does not explicitly address theories differing from both eudaimonism and from his own. I argue that whilst Kant and Act-Consequentialists advocate different normative principles, their positions share the important abstract feature that they establish what is to be done from a rational principle and not based on what is in the self-interest of the respective agent, as …Read more
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985Moral Education and Transcendental IdealismArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 102 (4): 646-673. 2020.In this paper, we draw attention to several important tensions between Kant’s account of moral education and his commitment to transcendental idealism. Our main claim is that, in locating freedom outside of space and time, transcendental idealism makes it difficult for Kant to both provide an explanation of how moral education occurs, but also to confirm that his own account actually works. Having laid out these problems, we then offer a response on Kant’s behalf. We argue that, while it might l…Read more
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952Kant and the demandingness of the virtue of beneficenceEuropean Journal of Philosophy 27 (3): 625-642. 2019.We discuss Kant’s conception of beneficence against the background of the overdemandingness debate. We argue that Kant’s conception of beneficence constitutes a sweet spot between overdemandingess and undemandingess. To this end we defend four key claims that together constitute a novel interpretation of Kant’s account of beneficence: 1) for the same reason that we are obligated to be beneficent to others we are permitted to be beneficent to ourselves; 2) we can prioritise our own ends; 3) it is…Read more
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106Kant, moral overdemandingness and self‐scrutinyNoûs 55 (2): 293-316. 2019.This paper contributes to the debate about how the overdemandingness objection applies to Kant's ethics. I first look at the versions of the overdemandingness objections Kant himself levels against other ethicists and ethical principles and I discuss in what sense he acknowledges overdemandingness as a problem. Then I argue that, according to Kant's own standards, introspection about the moral worthiness of one's actions can constitute forms of moral overdemandingness. Self-scrutiny and Kant's w…Read more
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55A Funeral March for Those Drowning in Shallow Ponds?: Imperfect Duties and EmergenciesKant Studien 110 (2): 236-255. 2019.I discuss the problem that Kant’s ethics seems to be incapable of capturing our strong intuition that emergencies create a context for actions that is very different from other cases of helping and from other opportunities to further obligatory ends. I argue that if we pay attention to how Kant grounds beneficence we see that distress and emergency function as constitutive concerns. They are vital to establishing the duty of beneficence in the first place, and they also guide the application of …Read more
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34Kant on Reflection and Virtue Melissa Merritt, (Cambridge: University Press, 2018, 234pp ISBN: 9781108344005, £75.00 hbk (review)European Journal of Philosophy 27 (2): 532-534. 2019.European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.
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36Kant’s transition project and late philosophy. Connecting the Opus postumum and Metaphysics of Morals (review)British Journal for the History of Philosophy 27 (3): 656-659. 2019.Volume 27, Issue 3, May 2019, Page 656-659.
Areas of Specialization
History of Western Philosophy |
Value Theory |
Areas of Interest
History of Western Philosophy |
Value Theory |