-
5Ei offentleg stemme. Estetikk og politikk hjå Rawls og CavellAgora Journal for metafysisk spekulasjon 26 (1-2): 84-102. 2008.
-
3Aspekter og ansikter – fysiognomisk persepsjon av andre menneskerNorsk Filosofisk Tidsskrift 37 (4): 224-240. 2002.
-
16The Concept of Philosophical ExperienceMetaphilosophy 39 (3): 265-281. 2008.We often speak about religious experience, and sometimes we speak about metaphysical experience. Yet we seldom hear about philosophical experience. Is philosophy purely a matter of theories and theses, or does it have an experiential aspect? In this article, I argue for the following three claims. First, there is something we might call philosophical experience, and there is nothing mystical about it. Second, philosophical experiences are expressed in something quite similar to what Kant called …Read more
-
38Inheritance and the FamilyJournal of Applied Philosophy 37 (2): 299-313. 2019.Inherited wealth will be of increasing importance in years to come. Yet inheritance taxation is unpopular, and part of this unpopularity is due to family concerns. Such taxation is seen by many as morally problematic because it is taken to violate important family values. In this article, we explore five family arguments against inheritance taxation: firstly, whether we have a right to benefit our children; secondly, whether it is a virtue to benefit one's children; thirdly, whether children hav…Read more
-
42The Democratic Duty to Educate OneselfEtikk I Praksis - Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics 2 129-141. 2018.I argue that democratic citizens have a duty to educate themselves politically. My argument proceeds in two stages. First, I establish a case for the moral importance of individual competence for voting, but also maintain that the substantial content of the required competence must remain open. I do this by way of an assessment of Jason Brennan's provocative defense of epistocracy. I try to show that there is no notion of political competence that can meet with reasonable agreement among citizen…Read more
-
16Family EthicsEtikk I Praksis - Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics 1 (1): 1-4. 2017.For this special issue of the Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics, we have selected four papers that address, directly or indirectly, some key issues in family ethics.
-
8Philosophical Experience in ChildhoodThinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children 17 (3): 4-12. 2004.
-
6Å vite hva man tror- Selverkjennelse og førstepersonsautoritet hos Davidson, Hacker og WittgensteinNorsk Filosofisk Tidsskrift 44 (1): 65-75. 2009.
-
20Rawls som praktisk filosofNorsk Filosofisk Tidsskrift 45 (3): 187-198. 2010.John Rawls is often seen as the archetypal abstract Theoretician within political philosophy. Some will also find his theory utopian and rationalist, in the negative sense. In this paper, though, the aim is to demonstrate that Rawls political philosophy is deeply practical. This is done by an interpretation of three different elements in his thought: Philosophical method, the original position, and publicity. The interpretations of Richard Rorty and Burton Dreben are criticized, whereas the tho…Read more
-
26The concept of philosophical educationEducational Theory 60 (5): 543-559. 2010.Strangely, the concept of philosophical education is not much in use, at least not as a philosophical concept. In this essay, Steinar Bøyum attempts to outline such a philosophical concept of philosophical education. Bøyum uses Plato's Allegory of the Cave, René Descartes's life of doubt, and Immanuel Kant's criticism of metaphysics as paradigms or defining examples of this concept. Bøyum's aim in this essay is not exegetical; rather, he hopes to describe these examples in a way that will let th…Read more
-
13The Legitimacy of Critical ThinkingThinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children 18 (1): 31-39. 2006.
-
324Philosophical allegories in RousseauPhilosophy and Literature 31 (1): 67-78. 2007.We usually think of philosophy as the production of theories and arguments. Yet there are other sides to philosophy, the recognition of which is necessary to understand its wider personal and cultural significance. Some of these sides are seldom acknowledged as philosophical at all, perhaps because literature has appropriated what professional philosophy unfortunately has lost. One philosophical activity often overlooked is the construction of philosophical allegories: to describe one's life in …Read more
-
24Wittgenstein, Social Views and Intransitive LearningJournal of Philosophy of Education 47 (3): 491-506. 2013.Wittgenstein often refers to matters of learning, and there have been efforts to extract a social conception of learning from his writings. In the first half of this article, I look at three such efforts, those of Meredith Williams, Christopher Winch, and David Bakhurst, and I say why I think these efforts fail. As I go on to argue, though, there is a fairly trivial sense in which learning is a social rather than a psychological phenomenon: ordinarily, there are public criteria for whether someo…Read more
-
87The concept of philosophical experienceMetaphilosophy 39 (3). 2008.We often speak about religious experience, and sometimes we speak about metaphysical experience. Yet we seldom hear about philosophical experience. Is philosophy purely a matter of theories and theses, or does it have an experiential aspect? In this article, I argue for the following three claims. First, there is something we might call philosophical experience, and there is nothing mystical about it. Second, philosophical experiences are expressed in something quite similar to what Kant called …Read more
-
36Thomas Piketty and the Justice of EducationJournal of Philosophy of Education 50 (2): 135-146. 2016.Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century is best known for its documentation of increasing social inequality, but it also has a notable normative aspect. Although Piketty is far less clear on the normative level than on the empirical, his view of justice can be summarised as meritocratic luck egalitarianism. This leads him to condemn as unjust the fact that inheritance is once again becoming more important than education for determining social position. In this paper, I discuss wheth…Read more
-
80Philosophy and Language LearningStudies in Philosophy and Education 26 (1): 43-56. 2006.In this paper, I explore different ways of picturing language learning in philosophy, all of them inspired by Wittgenstein and all of them concerned about scepticism of meaning. I start by outlining the two pictures of children and language learning that emerge from Kripke's famous reading of Wittgenstein. Next, I explore how social-pragmatic readings, represented by Meredith Williams, attempt to answer the sceptical anxieties. Finally, drawing somewhat on Stanley Cavell, I try to resolve these …Read more
-
150The Concept of Philosophical EducationEducational Theory 60 (5): 543-559. 2010.Strangely, the concept of philosophical education is not much in use, at least not as a philosophical concept. In this essay, Steinar Bøyum attempts to outline such a philosophical concept of philosophical education. Bøyum uses Plato's Allegory of the Cave, René Descartes's life of doubt, and Immanuel Kant's criticism of metaphysics as paradigms or defining examples of this concept. Bøyum's aim in this essay is not exegetical; rather, he hopes to describe these examples in a way that will let th…Read more
-
105Rawls’s notion of the political conception as educatorEuropean Journal of Political Theory 12 (2): 136-152. 2013.This paper explores John Rawls’s strangely neglected notion, the political conception as educator, which captures how the public political culture can educate citizens. The aim is to elucidate both the idea itself and above all its function in Rawls’s Political Liberalism. After first surveying its main content and some historical parallels, the main body of the paper explores why Rawls places so much trust in the educative effect of institutions and, apparently, so little in schools. Along the …Read more
-
University of BergenRegular Faculty
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Value Theory |
Philosophy of Mind |
20th Century Philosophy |
Philosophy of Action |