We readily identify and live by basic moral norms, but we are unsure about their justification. What explains morality? Is it an arbitrary invention? Does it rest on a mistake? My work tackles the threat of nihilism by offering a distinctive understanding of morality, an account I call “Relational Essentialism.” The best way to understand moral norms, I argue, is by thinking of them as grounded in the essence of living beings. However, in contrast to rival realist, essentialist views I propose we understand the essence of agency in fundamentally relational terms. Relational Essentialism bypasses a number of long-standing puzzles affecting familiar accounts in metaethics, normative theory, and legal and political philosophy.
I'm presently at work on a new book project, Relational Essentialism: a Relational Metaphysics of Morals. Kant and Hegel rejected the atomistic metaphysics of isolated substances endorsed by their empiricist and rationalist predecessors in favor of a metaphysics of structures and relations. Relational Essentialism draws from this radical but widely misunderstood metaphysical turn in the history of philosophy to develop a distinctive systematic account of the moral, proposing a relational transformation of basic metaphysical and normative categories (essence, purpose, normative powers, action, freedom, convention, and fundamental normative properties).
Relational Essentialism builds on my Cambridge Elements, Dignity and Rights, shifting a neo-Aristotelian metaphysics of kinds and dispositions to the normative domain to provide a distinctive understanding of the nature of dignity and rights.
Earlier work developed my relational account for a variety of topics in metaethics (e.g., the nature of the moral ought or the relation between the evaluative and the deontic); normative theory (e.g., dignity, rights, respect); and legal and political philosophy (e.g., human rights, socio-economic rights, poverty, practical authority, oppression).
Finally, my third book project is historical, aiming to reconstruct Kant and Hegel's account of morality in terms of their rejection of an atomistic metaphysics in favor of a metaphysics of structures and relations. Post-metaphysical readings of these philosophers, common among recent interpreters, have missed their fundamental shift to a relational ontology and have thereby misunderstood the explanatory potential of their accounts.
I'm presently at work on a new book project, Relational Essentialism: a Relational Metaphysics of Morals. Kant and Hegel rejected the atomistic metaphysics of isolated substances endorsed by their empiricist and rationalist predecessors in favor of a metaphysics of structures and relations. Relational Essentialism draws from this radical but widely misunderstood metaphysical turn in the history of philosophy to develop a distinctive systematic account of the moral, proposing a relational transformation of basic metaphysical and normative categories (essence, purpose, normative powers, action, freedom, convention, and fundamental normative properties).
Relational Essentialism builds on my Cambridge Elements, Dignity and Rights, shifting a neo-Aristotelian metaphysics of kinds and dispositions to the normative domain to provide a distinctive understanding of the nature of dignity and rights.
Earlier work developed my relational account for a variety of topics in metaethics (e.g., the nature of the moral ought or the relation between the evaluative and the deontic); normative theory (e.g., dignity, rights, respect); and legal and political philosophy (e.g., human rights, socio-economic rights, poverty, practical authority, oppression).
Finally, my third book project is historical, aiming to reconstruct Kant and Hegel's account of morality in terms of their rejection of an atomistic metaphysics in favor of a metaphysics of structures and relations. Post-metaphysical readings of these philosophers, common among recent interpreters, have missed their fundamental shift to a relational ontology and have thereby misunderstood the explanatory potential of their accounts.
