Notre Dame, Indiana, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy
  •  6
    Rescuing justice and stability
    Philosophy and Social Criticism. forthcoming.
    Though John Rawls's treatment of stability has received less attention than other parts of his work, it promises help in understanding how liberal institutions can reproduce themselves under non-ideal conditions like ours. But stability in Rawls's sense seems to depend ineliminably on society's justice, and Gerald Cohen powerfully criticized the connection Rawls drew between the two. Cohen contends that stability is ‘alien’ to justice rather than conceptually connected to it. It is therefore a c…Read more
  •  4
    Stability and equilibrium in political liberalism
    Philosophical Studies 181 (1): 23-41. 2024.
    Threats to the stability of liberal democracies are of obvious contemporary import. Concern with stability runs through John Rawls’s work. The stability that concerned him was that of fundamental terms of cooperation. Rawls long believed that the terms which would be stable were his two principles, but he eventually conceded that even a well-ordered society was more likely to be characterized by “justice pluralism” than by consensus on his own conception of justice. Contemporary liberal democrac…Read more
  •  7
    Comment on Gina Schouten
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 107 (1): 290-296. 2023.
  •  18
    Rawls's 'A theory of justice' at 50 (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. 2023.
    In 1971 John Rawls's A Theory of Justice transformed twentieth-century political philosophy, and it ranks among the most influential works in the history of the subject. This volume marks the 50th anniversary of the book's publication by offering a multi-faceted exploration of this important work.
  •  4
    Religion, Law, and Politics
    In Charles Taliaferro, Paul Draper & Philip L. Quinn (eds.), A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Liberalism Religion, Nationalism, and Citizenship Religion and Public Philosophy Anti‐liberalism Works cited.
  •  5
    Does Justice as Fairness Have a Religious Aspect?
    In Jon Mandle & David A. Reidy (eds.), A Companion to Rawls, Wiley. 2013.
    In this essay, the author tries to show the religious aspect of Rawls's work using a condition of religiosity that he himself endorsed. Section 1 looks at the passage in which Rawls asserts his condition of religiosity. In section 2, the author argues that Cohen's and Nagel's observation itself rests on a religiosity condition. In section 3, he shows how Rawls argued that Kant satisfied the religiosity condition and why Rawls thought Kant's moral philosophy has “a religious aspect.” Section 4 ex…Read more
  •  7
    Two questions for Professor Vallier
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 26 (4): 608-615. 2023.
    Kevin Vallier claims to have attained a ‘great goal’ of the social contract tradition: ‘to show that there are regimes supported by the reason of the public and that have authority for citizens in those regimes’. I contend that his argument depends upon changing the meanings of ‘reason of the public’ and ‘authority’, and conclude that he has not attained the goal he claims.
  •  19
    Fixed points and well-ordered societies
    Politics, Philosophy and Economics 22 (2): 197-212. 2023.
    Recent years have seen a certain impatience with John Rawls's approach to political philosophy and calls for the discipline to move beyond it. One source of dissatisfaction is Rawls's idea of a well-ordered society. In a recent article, Alex Schaefer has tried to give further impetus to this movement away from Rawlsian theorizing by pursuing a question about well-ordered societies that he thinks other critics have not thought to ask. He poses that question in the title of his article: “Is Justic…Read more
  •  3
    Legitimacy and the project of political liberalism
    In Thom Brooks & Martha Craven Nussbaum (eds.), Rawls's Political Liberalism, Cambridge University Press. pp. 73-112. 2015.
  •  18
    Does Liberal Egalitarianism Depend on a Theology?
    Faith and Philosophy 38 (3): 263-286. 2021.
    John Rawls’s argument for egalitarianism famously depends on his rejection of desert. In The Theology of Liberalism, Eric Nelson contends that Rawls’s treatment of desert depends on anti-Pelagian commitments he first endorsed in his undergraduate thesis and tacitly continued to hold. He also contends that a broad range of liberal arguments for economic egalitarianism fail because they rest on an incoherent conception of human agency. The failure becomes evident, Nelson says, when we see that pro…Read more
  •  9
    Justice & its motives: On Peter Vanderschraaf’s Strategic Justice
    Politics, Philosophy and Economics 20 (1): 3-21. 2021.
    Peter Vanderschraaf’s Strategic Justice is a powerful elaboration and defense of what he calls ‘justice as mutual advantage’. Vanderschraaf opens Strategic Justice by observing that ‘Plato set a template for all future philosophers by raising two interrelated questions: (1) What precisely is justice? (2) Why should one be just?’. He answers that (1) justice consists of conventions which (2) are followed because each sees that doing so is in her interest. These answers depend upon two conditions …Read more
  •  5
    First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
  •  28
    Comment: Reciprocity and the Rise of Populism
    Res Publica 26 (3): 423-431. 2020.
    It has recently been contended that the rise of populism in the US, culminating in the election of Donald Trump, vindicates liberal political theory, and the liberal political theory of John Rawls in particular. For the election of someone like Trump is just what Rawls’s theory would lead us to expect. Rawls’s theory would lead us to expect it because Rawls thought that if a liberal democracy is to be stable, it must satisfy the demands of reciprocity. But there is ample evidence that the contem…Read more
  •  26
    Solidarity and the New Inequality
    Journal of Religious Ethics 47 (2): 311-336. 2019.
    Economists now have the data to generate a high‐resolution picture of the economic inequalities within the very top fractions of income and wealth and between the top‐most fractions and others that have emerged since the early 1980s. I shall refer to these inequalities collectively as “the new inequality.” I argue that the moral value of solidarity can be used to raise pointed moral questions about the new inequality. In most cases, however, I shall raise such questions without answering them. F…Read more
  •  17
    Religious Ethics and Economic Inequality
    Journal of Religious Ethics 47 (2): 223-231. 2019.
    This essay serves as an introduction to five papers on economic inequality in this issue of the Journal of Religious Ethics. In addition to introducing the articles individually, the essay also gives a brief overview of recent economic developments that have led religious ethicists to call attention to the issue of inequality.
  •  8
    Replies to Commentators
    Philosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche. forthcoming.
    Download.
  •  9
    A Précis of Rawls, Political Liberalism and Reasonable Faith
    Philosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche. forthcoming.
    Download.
  •  20
    The Critical Pragmatism of Alain Locke: A Reader on Value Theory, Aesthetics, Community, Culture, Race, and Education (edited book)
    with Nancy Fraser, Astrid Franke, Sally J. Scholz, Mark Helbling, Judith M. Green, Richard Shusterman, Beth J. Singer, Jane Duran, Earl L. Stewart, Richard Keaveny, Rudolph V. Vanterpool, Greg Moses, Charles Molesworth, Verner D. Mitchell, Clevis Headley, Kenneth W. Stikkers, Talmadge C. Guy, Laverne Gyant, Rudolph A. Cain, Blanche Radford Curry, Segun Gbadegesin, and Stephen Lester Thompson
    Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1999.
    In its comprehensive overview of Alain Locke's pragmatist philosophy this book captures the radical implications of Locke's approach within pragmatism, the critical temper embedded in Locke's works, the central role of power and empowerment of the oppressed and the concept of broad democracy Locke employed
  •  11
    St. Thomas on the Motives of Unjust Acts
    Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 63 (n/a): 204. 1989.
  •  3
    Ethics, Religion and the Good Society (review)
    Faith and Philosophy 11 (2): 333-338. 1994.
  •  7
    Philosophy at Catholic Colleges and Universities in the United States
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 73 289-314. 1999.
  •  7
    Religion and the Obligations of Citizenship
    Cambridge University Press. 2002.
    In Religion and the Obligations of Citizenship Paul J. Weithman asks whether citizens in a liberal democracy may base their votes and their public political arguments on their religious beliefs. Drawing on empirical studies of how religion actually functions in politics, he challenges the standard view that citizens who rely on religious reasons must be prepared to make good their arguments by appealing to reasons that are 'accessible' to others. He contends that churches contribute to democracy…Read more
  •  32
    Contractualist Liberalism and Deliberative Democracy
    Philosophy and Public Affairs 24 (4): 314-343. 1995.
  • The Philosophy of Rawls. A Collection of Essays
    Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 64 (1): 179-180. 2002.
  • Sin can be seen to be central to the political thought of Thomas Aquinas if the concerns which moved him to the study of matters political are rightly appreciated. Aquinas is primarily concerned, I argue, to determine how good human beings can become by living under political institutions however well structured and thereby to ascertain the limits of natural reason's capacity to effect human moral improvement through the exercise of political power and the arrangement of political institutions. …Read more
  •  14
    Religion and Contemporary Liberalism (edited book)
    University of Notre Dame Press. 1997.
    This collection of papers makes a step towards increased dialogue among philosophical liberals and their theological, sociological and legal critics. The text should be significant for those concerned with the place of religion within a liberal society.