Current Major Projects

Framed by the work of G.E.M. Anscombe, this book project unites neo-Aristotelian reflections on the structure of intentional action with an interpretation of core features of Aristotle's ethical and political thought, in order to articulate a radical conception of Aristotle's "virtue politics."  On this conception, political community consists in an ethically-loaded form of collective action.  It emerges that an Aristotelian politics of virtue is two things at once:  a form of practical self-knowledge borne by agents, individual and collective; and a manifestation, whether perfect or sadly incomplete, of human nature, in a distinctive and unfamiliar sense.

A development of themes explored but eventually set aside during the course of the dissertation, this study pursues the implications of so-called "moral particularism" on contemporary political theory.  A blossoming topic of interest to moral philosophers, moral particularism has unfortunately received insufficient attention from political theorists.  But going pictures of the conditions for liberal-democratic legitimacy typically assume those models of principled deliberation and rational justification that particularism purports to threaten.  What must democratic legitimacy be like, if some attractive form of moral particularism is right?

Still in its very early stages, this project seeks to show how topics that centrally animate both political theorists and political scientists more generally can be illuminated by recent work in action theory.  On the explanatory side, plausible - Anscombean and "anti-causalist" - positions in the philosophy of action will make trouble for standard versions of the theory of rational choice, and for the description of political behavior in general.  On the normative side, these positions will challenge common conceptions of political responsibility and democratic accountability; and they will force revisions to familiar doctrines in applied normative theory, such as those concerning distributive justice and the conditions for a just war.  Related positions in action theory, especially "normative naturalism" and what philosophers label "disjunctivism," will also find application to political concerns.

(Last updated August 12, 2014)