-
19Duty to Self: Moral, Political, and Legal Self-RelationOxford University Press. 2021.That we owe duties to others is a commonplace, the subject of countless philosophical treatises and monographs. Morality is interpersonal and other-directed, many claim. But what of what we owe ourselves? In Duty to Self, Paul Schofield flips the paradigm of interpersonal morality by arguing that there are moral duties we owe ourselves, and that in light of this, philosophers need to significantly rethink many of their views about practical reason, moral psychology, politics, and moral emotions.…Read more
-
38Can Duties to the Self Bind if They Are Waivable?Australasian Journal of Philosophy 99 (1): 190-195. 2021.ABSTRACT It is often argued that, because she would always be in the position to waive it, a person cannot owe a duty to herself. In a recent AJP article, Janis David Schaab argues that a person can owe a duty to herself even if it can be waived, thus rendering unwarranted a scepticism about such duties, as well as efforts to show that they are unwaivable. Here I argue that, for all that Schaab says, waivability continues to threaten the very possibility of duties to self. As such, scepticism ab…Read more
-
21Philip Pettit, The Birth of Ethics: Reconstructing the Role and Nature of Morality, Kinch Hoekstra (ed.), Michael TomaselloJournal of Moral Philosophy 17 (6): 707-710. 2020.
-
61Practical Identity and Duties to the SelfAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 56 (3): 219-232. 2019.In this paper, I appeal to the notion of practical identity in order to defend the possibility of synchronic duties to the self—that is, self-directed duties focused on one's present self as opposed to one's future self. While many dismiss the idea of self-directed duties, I show that a person may be morally required to act in ways that advance her present interests and autonomy by virtue of her occupying multiple practical identities at a single moment.
-
74Following the law because it’s the law: obedience, bootstrapping, and practical reasonPhilosophical Explorations 21 (3): 400-411. 2018.Voluntarists in the early modern period speak of an agent’s following the law because she was ordered to do so or because it’s the law. Contemporary philosophers tend either to ignore or to dismiss the possibility of justified obedience of this sort – that is, they ignore or dismiss the possibility that something’s being the law could in itself constitute a good reason to act. In this paper, I suggest that this view isn’t taken seriously because of certain widespread beliefs about practical reas…Read more
-
21Action and Agency in The Red ShoesFilm-Philosophy 22 (3): 484-500. 2018.In this paper, I argue that Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's ballet musical The Red Shoes is concerned with topics surrounding phenomenology, action, and embodied agency, and that it exploits resources that are uniquely cinematic in order to “do philosophy.” I argue that the film does philosophy in two ways. First, it explicates a phenomenological model of action and agency. Second, it addresses itself to the philosophical question of whether an individual's non-reflective movements – tho…Read more
-
20Knowing Right From Wrong, written by Kieran SetiyaJournal of Moral Philosophy 13 (3): 385-388. 2016.
-
66Paternalism and RightJournal of Political Philosophy 26 (1): 65-83. 2017.Typically, we think of republicans and liberals as being suspicious of paternalistic law. But in this paper, I argue that enactment of paternalistic law is actually demanded by republican and liberal values, and that enacting certain paternalistic laws is one way that the republican or liberal state performs its core function. As I explain it, this core function is to create and to maintain conditions of right-conditions of freedom, non-domination, justice, etc.-among persons capable of making l…Read more
-
Bates CollegeAssistant Professor
Lewiston, Maine, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |
History of Western Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Value Theory |
History of Western Philosophy |