• Action, Hedonism, and Practical Law: An Essay on Kant
    Dissertation, Columbia University. 1995.
    This study explores Kant's accounts of acting from inclination and pursuing happiness. It culminates in two findings. First, Kant fails in his attempt to prove a central tenet of his ethics, namely that there can be no practical law of happiness. Second, Kant's critics have unfairly condemned his account of the role pleasure plays in acting from inclination. Chapter I, devoted to Kant's theory of agency, offers readings of his notions of willing, acting, and acting on a maxim. The chapter reject…Read more
  •  6
    Book Reviews (review)
    Ethics 112 (3): 634-637. 2002.
  •  42
    Reason, Sentiment, and Categorical Imperatives
    In James Lawrence Dreier (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Moral Theory, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 6--129. 2006.
  •  43
    The Kantian Moral Worth of Actions Contrary to Duty
    Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 53 (4). 1999.
    This paper concerns Kant's view of the relations between an actions's moral permissibility and its moral worth. In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant holds that only morally permissible actions can have moral worth. By restricting moral worth to morally permissible actions, Kant generates an asymmetrical account of how two kinds of failure affect an actions's moral worth. While failure to judge correctly whether one's action is morally permissible precludes it from having moral wo…Read more
  •  33
    Kidney Vouchers and Inequity in Transplantation
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 42 (5): 559-574. 2017.
    This article probes the voucher program from an ethical perspective. It focuses mainly on an issue of inequity. A disparity exists in US kidney transplantation. Although African-Americans suffer far higher rates of ESRD than whites, African-Americans are much less likely than whites to get a transplant. The article explores the voucher program in light of this disparity. It motivates the view that, at least in the short term, more whites than African-Americans are likely to take advantage of the…Read more
  •  17
    Deriving the Formula of Universal Law
    In Graham Bird (ed.), A Companion to Kant, Wiley-blackwell. 2006.
    This chapter contains sections titled: I II III IV V VI.
  •  72
    How to Treat Persons
    Oxford University Press. 2013.
    Samuel J. Kerstein develops a new, broadly Kantian account of the ethical issues that arise when a person treats another merely as a means. He explores how Kantian principles on the dignity of persons shed light on pressing issues in modern bioethics, including the distribution of scarce medical resources and the regulation of markets in organs.
  •  42
    Kant’s Search for the Supreme Principle of Morality
    Cambridge University Press. 2002.
    At the core of Kant's ethics lies the claim that if there is a supreme principle of morality then it cannot be a principle based on utilitarianism or Aristotelian perfectionism or the Ten Commandments. The only viable candidate for such a principle is the categorical imperative. This book is the most detailed investigation of this claim. It constructs a new, criterial reading of Kant's derivation of one version of the categorical imperative: the Formula of Universal Law. This reading shows this …Read more
  •  7
    Nietzsche and Metaphysics (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 50 (3): 682-682. 1997.
    This book explores the metaphysical writings Nietzsche produced in his "mature" period, that is, after 1882. As its title hints, however, it does not focus exclusively on Nietzsche's own metaphysics. Poellner brings philosophical learning of an impressive scope to bear on his reading of Nietzsche, situating his views in relation to those of his intellectual forbears and testing them against those of contemporary analytic philosophers. Relying heavily on Nietzsche's notes, he addresses some key a…Read more
  •  8
    This chapter contains sections titled: I II III IV V VI Bibliography.
  •  90
    Complete lives in the balance
    American Journal of Bioethics 10 (4). 2010.
    The allocation of scarce health care resources such as flu treatment or organs for transplant presents stark problems of distributive justice. Persad, Wertheimer, and Emanuel have recently proposed a novel system for such allocation. Their “complete lives system” incorporates several principles, including ones that prescribe saving the most lives, preserving the most life-years, and giving priority to persons between 15 and 40 years old. This paper argues that the system lacks adequate moral fou…Read more
  •  66
    Autonomy, Moral Constraints, and Markets in Kidneys
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 34 (6): 573-585. 2009.
    This article concerns the morality of establishing regulated kidney markets in an effort to reduce the chronic shortage of kidneys for transplant. The article tries to rebut the view, recently defended by James Taylor, that if we hold autonomy to be intrinsically valuable, then we should be in favor of such markets. The article then argues that, under current conditions, the buying and selling of organs in regulated markets would sometimes violate two Kantian principles that are seen as moral co…Read more
  •  33
    Are Kidney Markets Morally Permissible If Vendors Do Not Benefit?
    American Journal of Bioethics 14 (10): 29-30. 2014.
    No abstract
  •  48
    Life-saving health resources like organs for transplant and experimental medications are persistently scarce. How ought we, morally speaking, to ration these resources? Many hold that, in any morally acceptable allocation scheme, the young should to some extent be prioritized over the old. Govind Persad, Alan Wertheimer and Ezekiel Emanuel propose a multi-principle allocation scheme called the Complete Lives System, according to which persons roughly between 15 and 40 years old get priority over…Read more
  •  22
    Treating oneself merely as a means
    In Monika Betzler (ed.), Kant's Ethics of Virtues, De Gruyter. pp. 201-218. 2008.
  •  45
    The allocation of scarce health care resources such as flu treatment or organs for transplant presents stark problems of distributive justice. Persad, Wertheimer, and Emanuel have recently proposed a novel system for such allocation. Their “complete lives system” incorporates several principles, including ones that prescribe saving the most lives, preserving the most life-years, and giving priority to persons between 15 and 40 years old. This paper argues that the system lacks adequate moral fou…Read more
  •  122
    Korsgaard's Kantian Arguments for the Value of Humanity
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 31 (1): 23-52. 2001.
    In The Sources of Normativity, Christine Korsgaard affirms that Enlightenment morality is true: humanity is valuable. To many of us few claims seem more obvious. Yet Enlightenment thinkers such as Kant do not limit themselves to affirming that humanity is valuable. They appeal to reason in an effort to establish it. They try to show that, in some sense, we are rationally compelled to recognize the value of humanity. Korsgaard joins in this effort. She champions the claim that unless we take huma…Read more
  •  347
    Kantian condemnation of commerce in organs
    Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 19 (2). 2009.
    Opponents of commerce in organs sometimes appeal to Kant’s Formula of Humanity to justify their position. Kant implies that anyone who sells an integral part of his body violates this principle and thereby acts wrongly. Although appeals to Kant’s Formula are apt, they are less helpful than they might be because they invoke the necessity of respecting the dignity of ends in themselves without specifying in detail what dignity is or what it means to respect it, and they cite the wrongness of an ag…Read more
  •  50
    Kant and Modern Political Philosophy
    Philosophical Review 111 (3): 436-439. 2002.
    In Kant and Modern Political Philosophy, Katrin Flikschuh pursues two main aims. She tries to show that Kant’s theory of Right [Recht] is grounded in Kantian metaphysics. For example, we do not really understand Kant’s thought on property rights and cosmopolitanism unless we have in view its metaphysical underpinnings. Second, Flikschuh attempts to demonstrate the relevance of Kant’s theory of Right, especially as it is presented in Kant’s notoriously difficult Rechtslehre, to contemporary polit…Read more
  •  42
    Dignity, Disability, and Lifespan
    Journal of Applied Philosophy. 2017.
    In the Paraplegia Case, we must choose either to preserve the life of a paraplegic for 10 years or that of someone in full health for the same duration. Non-consequentialists reject a benefit-maximising view, which holds that since the person in full health will have a higher quality of life, we ought to save him straightaway. In the Unequal Lifespan Case, we face a choice between saving one person for 5 years in full health and another for 25 years in full health. Frances Kamm has recently unfu…Read more
  •  58
    Death, Dignity, and Respect
    Social Theory and Practice 35 (4): 505-530. 2009.
  •  16
    Autonomy and practical law
    Philosophical Books 49 (2): 107-113. 2008.
  •  524
    Saving Lives and Respecting Persons
    Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 5 (2): 1-21. 2010.
    In the distribution of resources, persons must be respected, or so many philosophers contend. Unfortunately, they often leave it unclear why a certain allocation would respect persons, while another would not. In this paper, we explore what it means to respect persons in the distribution of scarce, life-saving resources. We begin by presenting two kinds of cases. In different age cases, we have a drug that we must use either to save a young person who would live for many more years or an old per…Read more