(Please e-mail me if you'd like a copy of any of these or visit my academia. edu page)
Articles
'Rights and the Good' (forthcoming) Philosophical Quarterly -- the standard structure of ethical theory is to assign priority to deontic notions over value notions (or vice-versa). Here, I argue that we should conceive of the structure of ethical theory differently, where the notions of rights and of the good are mutually dependent rather than prior to one another. This gives us a better way of understanding the place and significance of rights while mounting pressure on broadly consequentialist accounts.
'The Will as a Causal Power', in C. McLear and C. Marshall (eds.), Kant’s Fundamental Assumptions, under contract with Oxford University Press. (with comments by Sebastian Rödl) (forthcoming) -- contrary to the prevalent 'two standpoints' reading on the nature of action and agency, I argue that Kant's account of the will is better read as developing a Neo-Aristotelian metaphysics of dispositions, resulting in a much more unified view of our agency.
‘The Relational Wrong of Poverty’, (2023) Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 26: 303–319 -- develops insights from Kant's philosophy of right to show how a Kantian view can accommodate and explain the various relational forms (interpersonal and structural) in which poverty wrongs individuals.
'Moral Rights without Balancing', Philosophical Studies (2022) 179: 549-569 -- introduces a model for resolving conflicts of rights that preserves the absolute deontic force of rights while holistically and relationally specifying their content. I argue that the model helps resolve long-standing puzzles in conflict cases -- including cases of residual remedies and accountability.
'Relational Primitivism', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2021) 102: 401-422 -- after introducing a fascinating historical debate between Leibniz and Pufendorf (as exemplars of value-based and voluntarist accounts), I develop a relational alternative that analyses the moral ought in terms of relational entitlements.
‘Humanity without Equality’, Special Issue on Andrea Sangiovanni’s Humanity without Dignity, Philosophy and Public Issues. (2018) -- discusses Sangiovanni's explanation of the grounds of moral equality and questions whether an ideal of humanity can shoulder the explanatory burden Sangiovanni assigns to it.
'Bread as Freedom: Kant on the State's Duties to the Poor', D. Heide and E. Tiffany (eds.), Kantian Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming) -- offers a novel interpretation of Kant's puzzling claim that the state owes duties of support to the poor. Such duties are neither duties of charity nor private duties remedying the asymmetries of a property system. Rather, they are public duties generated by the view that our agency is essentially animal.
‘The Relational Structure of Human Dignity’, Australasian Journal ofPhilosophy (2018) -- argues that familiar accounts of dignity face more difficulties than has been appreciated explaining how dignity generates a duty of respect -- and shows that a relational analysis can explain better the link between dignity and respect.
‘Two Second-Personal Conceptions of the Dignity of Persons’, European Journal of Philosophy (2017) 25:4, 921-943 -- argues that Stephen Darwall's second-personal account of the dignity of persons faces a dilemma: it succumbs either to a problem of antecedence or to the wrong kind of reasons problem. But this need not mean that one should give up on second-personal theories. To the contrary, it gives us reason for introducing an alternative account of the second-person in terms of relational normativity.
'The Indivisibility of Human Rights', Law and Philosophy (2017) 36 (4):389-418. -- it is a common idea among advocates and practitioners that human rights are 'indivisible' yet the standard philosophical accounts are riddled with difficulties. The paper introduces a novel analysis in terms of inferential relations of normative commitment that promises to vindicate the powerful idea that all human rights constitute a unified system.
'Human Rights, Categorical Duties: A Dilemma for Instrumentalism', Utilitas 28:4 (2016), 368-395 -- questions the prevalent assumption that an instrumentalist account can accommodate the categorical duties typically thought to correlate with human rights and formulates a dilemma: either give up instrumentalism about human rights, or develop a deflationary account of human rights, where such rights do not generate categorical duties.
'Why Human Rights? Because of You', Journal of Political Philosophy 24:3 (2016), 321-343 -- defends a relational deontological justification of human rights and shows that such a model of justification avoids the problems of vicious circularity and emptiness typically attributed to deontological accounts.
'Human Rights and the Rights of States: A Relational Account', Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46:3 (2016), 291–317 -- develops a relational deontological justification of the rights of states and offers an alternative to the currently dominant cosmopolitan thesis that the justification of the sovereignty of states is instrumental. Instead, the sovereignty of states is justified non-instrumentally as partly constitutive of the human rights of individuals.
'Human Dignity', Philosophy Compass 11:4 (2016), 201–210 -- a critical survey of leading philosophical accounts of human dignity.
'The Public Form of Law: Kant on the Second-Personal Constitution of Freedom' Kantian Review 21:1 (2016), pp. 101-126 -- defends a second-personal interpretation of Immanuel Kant's conception of the relationship between external freedom and public law.
'The Very Thought of (Wronging) You', J. Conant and S. Rödl, special issue on the second-person of Philosophical Topics 42:1 (2014), 153-17 -- defends a second-personal theory of rights, the view that claim-rights are fundamentally first-order claims to independence from others coupled with a second-order power of enforcement. This view seeks to offer an alternative to the two standard theories of rights, namely, the Interest and the Choice theories.
'Kant’s Juridical Idea of Human Rights', A. Føllesdal and R. Maliks (eds.), Kantian Theory and Human Rights (New York: Routledge, 2014), pp. 27-51 -- develops Kant's philosophy of right as a promising and distinctive account of human rights.
Books
Dignity and Rights: A Kind-Dispositional Model (under contract with CUP for the Elements in the Philosophy of Law). This Elements series is focused on the nature of dignity and of rights. The first two chapters structure the leading philosophical accounts as oscillating between naturalist and conventionalist views. The third and fourth chapters introduce a novel model that develops a broadly Neo-Aristotelian metaphysics of kinds and powers. The basic idea is that dignity and rights function as irreducibly normative dispositions anchored in distinctive kinds. Chapter 3 shows how dignity and rights can be natural yet relational properties, insofar as they are inherently directed to realization and recognition by others. Such recognition completes the reality of dignity and rights. Chapter 4 shows how the relational model can develop the influential Standard Model of Social Ontology to show how rights and dignity are constitutive of social kinds. And yet, such social kinds at once make freedom possible but also introduce novel possibilities of injustice and oppression disguised under the cover of the illusion of dignity and rights.
La Educación Intercultural como Ejercicio de Derechos Humanos (Intercultural Education as Human Rights Practice), Lima: APRODEH, 2008.
Book Reviews
Review of Colin Bird, Human Dignity and Political Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2022)
Review of Stephen Darwall, Honor, History, and Relationship: Essays in Second-Personal Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) Ethics 125:3 (2015).
Work in Progress (titles removed to facilitate blind review)
Articles
'Rights and the Good' (forthcoming) Philosophical Quarterly -- the standard structure of ethical theory is to assign priority to deontic notions over value notions (or vice-versa). Here, I argue that we should conceive of the structure of ethical theory differently, where the notions of rights and of the good are mutually dependent rather than prior to one another. This gives us a better way of understanding the place and significance of rights while mounting pressure on broadly consequentialist accounts.
'The Will as a Causal Power', in C. McLear and C. Marshall (eds.), Kant’s Fundamental Assumptions, under contract with Oxford University Press. (with comments by Sebastian Rödl) (forthcoming) -- contrary to the prevalent 'two standpoints' reading on the nature of action and agency, I argue that Kant's account of the will is better read as developing a Neo-Aristotelian metaphysics of dispositions, resulting in a much more unified view of our agency.
‘The Relational Wrong of Poverty’, (2023) Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 26: 303–319 -- develops insights from Kant's philosophy of right to show how a Kantian view can accommodate and explain the various relational forms (interpersonal and structural) in which poverty wrongs individuals.
'Moral Rights without Balancing', Philosophical Studies (2022) 179: 549-569 -- introduces a model for resolving conflicts of rights that preserves the absolute deontic force of rights while holistically and relationally specifying their content. I argue that the model helps resolve long-standing puzzles in conflict cases -- including cases of residual remedies and accountability.
'Relational Primitivism', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2021) 102: 401-422 -- after introducing a fascinating historical debate between Leibniz and Pufendorf (as exemplars of value-based and voluntarist accounts), I develop a relational alternative that analyses the moral ought in terms of relational entitlements.
‘Humanity without Equality’, Special Issue on Andrea Sangiovanni’s Humanity without Dignity, Philosophy and Public Issues. (2018) -- discusses Sangiovanni's explanation of the grounds of moral equality and questions whether an ideal of humanity can shoulder the explanatory burden Sangiovanni assigns to it.
'Bread as Freedom: Kant on the State's Duties to the Poor', D. Heide and E. Tiffany (eds.), Kantian Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming) -- offers a novel interpretation of Kant's puzzling claim that the state owes duties of support to the poor. Such duties are neither duties of charity nor private duties remedying the asymmetries of a property system. Rather, they are public duties generated by the view that our agency is essentially animal.
‘The Relational Structure of Human Dignity’, Australasian Journal ofPhilosophy (2018) -- argues that familiar accounts of dignity face more difficulties than has been appreciated explaining how dignity generates a duty of respect -- and shows that a relational analysis can explain better the link between dignity and respect.
‘Two Second-Personal Conceptions of the Dignity of Persons’, European Journal of Philosophy (2017) 25:4, 921-943 -- argues that Stephen Darwall's second-personal account of the dignity of persons faces a dilemma: it succumbs either to a problem of antecedence or to the wrong kind of reasons problem. But this need not mean that one should give up on second-personal theories. To the contrary, it gives us reason for introducing an alternative account of the second-person in terms of relational normativity.
'The Indivisibility of Human Rights', Law and Philosophy (2017) 36 (4):389-418. -- it is a common idea among advocates and practitioners that human rights are 'indivisible' yet the standard philosophical accounts are riddled with difficulties. The paper introduces a novel analysis in terms of inferential relations of normative commitment that promises to vindicate the powerful idea that all human rights constitute a unified system.
'Human Rights, Categorical Duties: A Dilemma for Instrumentalism', Utilitas 28:4 (2016), 368-395 -- questions the prevalent assumption that an instrumentalist account can accommodate the categorical duties typically thought to correlate with human rights and formulates a dilemma: either give up instrumentalism about human rights, or develop a deflationary account of human rights, where such rights do not generate categorical duties.
'Why Human Rights? Because of You', Journal of Political Philosophy 24:3 (2016), 321-343 -- defends a relational deontological justification of human rights and shows that such a model of justification avoids the problems of vicious circularity and emptiness typically attributed to deontological accounts.
'Human Rights and the Rights of States: A Relational Account', Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46:3 (2016), 291–317 -- develops a relational deontological justification of the rights of states and offers an alternative to the currently dominant cosmopolitan thesis that the justification of the sovereignty of states is instrumental. Instead, the sovereignty of states is justified non-instrumentally as partly constitutive of the human rights of individuals.
'Human Dignity', Philosophy Compass 11:4 (2016), 201–210 -- a critical survey of leading philosophical accounts of human dignity.
'The Public Form of Law: Kant on the Second-Personal Constitution of Freedom' Kantian Review 21:1 (2016), pp. 101-126 -- defends a second-personal interpretation of Immanuel Kant's conception of the relationship between external freedom and public law.
'The Very Thought of (Wronging) You', J. Conant and S. Rödl, special issue on the second-person of Philosophical Topics 42:1 (2014), 153-17 -- defends a second-personal theory of rights, the view that claim-rights are fundamentally first-order claims to independence from others coupled with a second-order power of enforcement. This view seeks to offer an alternative to the two standard theories of rights, namely, the Interest and the Choice theories.
'Kant’s Juridical Idea of Human Rights', A. Føllesdal and R. Maliks (eds.), Kantian Theory and Human Rights (New York: Routledge, 2014), pp. 27-51 -- develops Kant's philosophy of right as a promising and distinctive account of human rights.
Books
Dignity and Rights: A Kind-Dispositional Model (under contract with CUP for the Elements in the Philosophy of Law). This Elements series is focused on the nature of dignity and of rights. The first two chapters structure the leading philosophical accounts as oscillating between naturalist and conventionalist views. The third and fourth chapters introduce a novel model that develops a broadly Neo-Aristotelian metaphysics of kinds and powers. The basic idea is that dignity and rights function as irreducibly normative dispositions anchored in distinctive kinds. Chapter 3 shows how dignity and rights can be natural yet relational properties, insofar as they are inherently directed to realization and recognition by others. Such recognition completes the reality of dignity and rights. Chapter 4 shows how the relational model can develop the influential Standard Model of Social Ontology to show how rights and dignity are constitutive of social kinds. And yet, such social kinds at once make freedom possible but also introduce novel possibilities of injustice and oppression disguised under the cover of the illusion of dignity and rights.
La Educación Intercultural como Ejercicio de Derechos Humanos (Intercultural Education as Human Rights Practice), Lima: APRODEH, 2008.
- In this short, popular book designed as a teaching tool in Peru, I argue that respect for human rights requires instituting an intercultural model of education. To do so, first I sketch a model theory of human rights as direct requirements of respect for another's freedom and then show how this conception of human rights means that in multicultural contexts the system of education must be intercultural. I conclude by suggesting some guidelines about how this model of education might be implemented.
Book Reviews
Review of Colin Bird, Human Dignity and Political Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2022)
Review of Stephen Darwall, Honor, History, and Relationship: Essays in Second-Personal Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) Ethics 125:3 (2015).
Work in Progress (titles removed to facilitate blind review)
- A paper on metaethical constitutivism.
- A paper on reasons and requirements.
- A paper on the metaphysics of practical relations.
- A paper on dignity and recognition.
- A paper on lying.
- A paper on moral equality.
- A paper on the nature of interpersonal action.
- A paper on the nature of practical authorities and reasons for action.
- A paper on relational normativity and accountability.
- A paper on Kant's account of moral obligation.
- A paper on Kant's theory of action.
