I work at the intersection of political philosophy, legal theory, and ethics. The overarching aim of my research program is to construct, defend, and criticize theories of the principles, concepts, values, and practices which guide the conduct of individuals and institutions. My research program divides into two tracks. The first is largely normative, the second largely conceptual.
I. The first track tackles normative and evaluative questions about political phenomena, like racism and oppression; about political institutions, like criminalization and presidential systems; and about important human sentiments, like respect for humanity and love for the world. The aim here is to explain why acknowledged evils are wrong, to identify what if anything justifies coercive institutions like the criminal law, and to identify what makes acknowledged goods good. Along this track, I have pursued three research projects.
The first project aims to explain the wrongness of acknowledged evils like racism and oppression. My papers on "Why Oppression Is Wrong" and "What Makes Racism Wrong?" foray into this area.
The second project aims to identify certain normative features of high-level legal institutions: the criminal law, presidential systems, and constitutions generally. This project produced the papers "What (If Anything) Can Justify Criminalization?", Constitutional Responsibility (which I wrote wiith Andras Szigeti), and "Can Presidential Systems Be Just?"; the latter is under review at a respected political theory journal.
The third project aims to explain the value of such acknowledged goods as freedom, respect for humanity, and love for the world. My papers on "Do We Need Freedom?", Two Human Sentiments", and "Loving the World" carry forward this project. The latter two papers deal with moral psychology, the study of the emotions, desires, choices, intentions, and habits that motivate us to act morally or immorally. I pursued a further inquiry into moral psychology in a paper asking "What Is the Fundamental Difference between the Thomist and Hobbesian Theories of the Will?"
II. The second track which my overall research program pursues is largely conceptual. My research along this track tackles general conceptual questions about ethics, politics, ethical and political principles, and normative and critical theories . The aim here is to identify the essential features, the structure, and the interrelationships of ethics and morality, of ethical and political principles, of politics, and of normative theories. Along this track, I have pursued four research projects.
The first project concerns the structure of political and moral theories. My chief endeavor along these lines has been my dissertation. It asks to what extent political theories depend on ethics. I pursued this project in my dissertation. You can find more information about it here. I have also written a paper on the structure of a moral-cum-psychological-cum-cosmological theory: philosophical pessimism. The paper tries to specify the Theoretical Foundations of Pessimism.
The second project, which largely consisted of ground-clearing for the first, concerns the essential features of ethics. Here I am concerned with the content and structure of ethics and morality, as well as the ontological status of ethical principles. This project produced the papers "What Distinguishes Morality from Ethics?" and "Is Ethical Nihilism True?" Such metaethical problems lead naturally to the question which kinds of things have intrinsic value. I tackled a part of this question in "Anthropocentrism and the Argument from Gaia Theory."
The third project investigates the nature of politics. My paper "What Is Politics?" tries to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for its existence. The Functions of Politics specifies politics' main functions. I am working on a paper on "The Justification of Politics," which tries to identify its justification conditions.
The fourth project I have already completed. It inquired into the methods used by political theorists. The two papers this project produced, "Do Critical and Normative Inquiry Conflict?" and "On Styles of Dealing with Problems in Political Theory," (which I co-wrote with Paulina Ochoa Espejo) are currently under review or revise and resubmit at philosophy journals.