•  21
    Republicanism and Structural Domination
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 102 (2): 292-319. 2021.
    What is domination? According to a leading strand of republican political philosophy, a person is dominated when under the unconstrained power of another. Call this the dyadic conception of domination, because it involves a two‐person relation. I argue that domination is better understood structurally. Structural domination is domination by institutions. Rather than a master dominating a slave and a boss dominating a worker (as in dyadic domination), structural domination holds that the institut…Read more
  •  48
    What Is Provisional Right?
    with Martin Jay Stone
    Philosophical Review 131 (1): 51-98. 2022.
    Kant maintains that while claims to property are morally possible in a state of nature, such claims are merely “provisional”; they become “conclusive” only in a civil condition involving political institutions. Kant’s commentators find this thesis puzzling, since it seems to assert a natural right to property alongside a commitment to property’s conventionality. We resolve this apparent contradiction. Provisional right is not a special kind of right. Instead, it marks the imperfection of an acti…Read more
  •  52
    Rousseau on the ground of obligation: Reconsidering the Social Autonomy interpretation
    European Journal of Political Theory 17 (2): 233-243. 2018.
    In Rousseau’s Social Contract, political laws are rationally binding because they satisfy the interests that motivate individuals to obey such laws. The later books of Emile justify morality by showing that it is continuous with the natural dispositions of a well-brought-up subject and is thus conducive to genuine happiness. In both the moral and political cases, Rousseau argues for an internal connection between the rational ground of an obligation and the broader aspects of human psychology th…Read more
  •  64
    The provisionality of property rights in Kant’s Doctrine of Right
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 48 (6): 850-876. 2018.
    I criticize two ways of interpreting Kant's claim that property rights are merely ‘provisional’ in the state of nature.Weak provisionalityholds that in the state of nature agents can make rightful claims to property. What is lacking is the institutional context necessary to render their claims secure. By contrast,strong provisionalityholds that making property claims in the state of nature wrongs others. I argue for a third view,anticipatory provisionality, according to which state of nature pro…Read more
  •  81
    Freedom and poverty in the Kantian state
    European Journal of Philosophy 26 (3): 911-931. 2018.
    The coercive authority of the Kantian state is rationally grounded in the ideal of equal external freedom, which is realized when each individual can choose and act without being constrained by another's will. This ideal does not seem like it can justify state-mandated economic redistribution. For if one is externally free just as long as one can choose and act without being constrained by another, then only direct slavery, serfdom, or other systems of overt control seem to threaten external fre…Read more
  •  57
    Human Rights Are the Rights of the Infinite: An Interview with Alain Badiou
    with Max Blechman and Anita Chari
    Historical Materialism 20 (4): 162-186. 2012.
    In seeking to found a ‘new political logic’, Badiou argues that we can only retrieve the political sense of concrete negation through its subordination to a prior field of affirmation: i.e. the opening of a new possibility inside a given historical situation, or ‘the event’, that may be politically realised through the creation of a ‘new subjective body’ consisting in the social affirmation of those new possibilities. Revolutionary politics is therefore said to rest on a synthesis of, on the one…Read more
  •  55
    Rawls on Meaningful Work and Freedom
    Social Theory and Practice 41 (3): 477-504. 2015.
    In this article, I criticize Rawls’s well-ordered society for failing to secure a right to meaningful work. I critically discuss five technical Rawlsian ideas: self-respect, social union, the difference principle, the powers and prerogatives of office, and fair equality of opportunity. I then claim that radical restructuring of the workplace conflicts with Rawls’s individualistic understanding of freedom. Briefly drawing on Hegel, an under-recognized historical influence on Rawls, I then correct…Read more
  •  33
    Frihed og lykke i Rousseaus retfærdiggørelse af staten
    Studier i Pædagogisk Filosofi 3 (1): 71-94. 2014.
    Political philosophers tend to think that Rousseau is significant because his contractarianism anticipates Kant. However, reading Rousseau in this way requires us to ignore his frequent and emphatic appeals to the role of happiness as collective flourishing in establishing the rational authority of justice. I offer a reading of Rousseau’s political theory which accounts for this eudaimonistic aspect of his thought. I argue that for Rousseau, as for Kant, obligations are structured by the autonom…Read more