The New School
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2014
Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics
Normative Ethics
  • The Philosophy of Recognition (edited book)
    with Thomas Kurana
    Routledge. 2010.
  •  3
    The Radical Demand in Løgstrup’s Ethics, written by Robert Stern
    Danish Yearbook of Philosophy 1-3. forthcoming.
  •  17
    This paper argues that Aristotelian ethical naturalism can combine two commitments that are often held to be incompatible: (a) a commitment to a strong form of ethical objectivity and (b) a thoroughgoing historicism about ethical value. The notions of species and life-form invoked by ethical naturalism do not, I argue, rely upon an ahistorical picture of human nature. I develop this idea by building upon Philippa Foot's defence of ethical naturalism in Natural Goodness. I go on to argue that lin…Read more
  •  37
    Does Moral Philosophy ‘Leave Everything As It Is’?
    Analysis 82 (1): 169-179. 2022.
  •  17
    The Aesthetics of Moral Address
    Philosophical Topics 49 (1): 123-144. 2021.
    Acts of interpersonal moral address depend upon a shared space of social visibility in which human beings can both display themselves and perceive others as morally important. This raises questions that have gone largely undiscussed in recent philosophical work on moral address. How does the social mediation of interpersonal perception by forces such as ideology shape and limit the possibilities for moral address? And how might creative acts of putting oneself on display make possible unanticipa…Read more
  •  10
    Social Visibility: Theory and Practice
    Philosophical Topics 49 (1): 1-11. 2021.
  •  83
    The struggle for recognition of what?
    European Journal of Philosophy 28 (3): 586-601. 2020.
    In order for the concept, 'recognition', to play a critical role in social theory, it must be possible to draw a distinction between due recognition and failures of recognition. Some recognition theorists, including Axel Honneth, argue that this distinction can be preserved only if we presuppose that due recognition involves a rational response to "evaluative qualities" that can be rightly perceived in the context of social interaction. This paper points out a problem facing recent defenses of t…Read more
  •  83
    Recent discussions in critical social epistemology have raised the idea that the concept 'knower' is not only an epistemological concept, but an ethical concept as well. Though this idea plays a central role in these discussions, the theoretical underpinnings of the claim have not received extended scrutiny. This paper explores the idea that 'knower' is an irreducibly ethical concept in an effort to defend its use as a critical concept. In Section 1, I begin with the claim that 'knower' is an ir…Read more
  •  103
    Creative Resentments: The Role of Emotions in Moral Change
    Philosophical Quarterly 68 (273): 739-757. 2018.
    This paper develops two related theses concerning resentment. The first, which I label the ‘prior norm requirement’, holds that feelings of resentment are grounded in the resenter’s conviction that some portion of their existing normative expectations has been violated. The second holds that resentments can make a rational contribution to the development of new normative expectations, transforming the resenter’s existing normative outlook. Certain expressions of the prior norm requirement in rec…Read more
  •  67
    Wronged beyond words: On the publicity and repression of moral injury
    Philosophy and Social Criticism 42 (8): 815-834. 2016.
    In this article, I discuss cases in which moral grievances, particularly assertions that a moral injury has taken place, are systematically obstructed by received linguistic and epistemic practices. I suggest a social epistemological model for theorizing such cases of moral epistemic injustice. Towards this end, I offer a reconstruction of Lyotard’s concept of the differend, comparing it with Miranda Fricker’s concept of epistemic injustice, and considering it in light of some criticisms posed b…Read more
  •  1538
    Epistemic Injustice in the space of reasons
    Episteme 12 (1): 75-93. 2015.
    In this paper, I make explicit some implicit commitments to realism and conceptualism in recent work in social epistemology exemplified by Miranda Fricker and Charles Mills. I offer a survey of recent writings at the intersection of social epistemology, feminism, and critical race theory, showing that commitments to realism and conceptualism are at once implied yet undertheorized in the existing literature. I go on to offer an explicit defense of these commitments by drawing from the epistemolog…Read more
  •  21
    Understanding Moral Obligation: Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, by Robert Stern (review)
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 34 (1): 230-234. 2013.