Analysis 84 (2): 385–400. 2024. Symposium on my The Practical Origins of Ideas. By invitation. doi:10.1093/analys/anad010
Responds to commentaries by Cheryl Misak, Alexander Prescott-Couch, and Paul Roth.
analysis, concepts, conceptual engineering, conceptual reverse-engineering, genealogy, history
Download PDFAnalysis 84 (2): 341–344. 2024. Symposium on my The Practical Origins of Ideas. By invitation. doi:10.1093/analys/anad011
Summarizes my book for a symposium in Analysis.
analysis, conceptual engineering, genealogy, history of ideas, state of nature, book symposium
Download PDFEuropean Journal of Philosophy 31 (2): 501–508. By invitation. 2023. doi:10.1111/ejop.12874
Reconstructs Reginster’s account of Nietzsche’s critique of morality as a “self-undermining functionality critique” and raise three problems for it.
functionality, function, genealogy, genealogical debunking, metaethics, morality
Download PDFIn Social Functions in Philosophy: Metaphysical, Normative, and Methodological Perspectives. Rebekka Hufendiek, Daniel James, and Raphael Van Riel (eds.), 200–218. London: Routledge. 2020. doi:10.4324/9780429435393
This paper argues that state-of-nature stories, read as dynamic models rather than history, can reveal how key normative practices meet collective needs of coordination, conflict-management, and non-domination. Drawing on Hume’s genealogy of justice, Williams’s genealogy of truthfulness, and related work, it shows how concepts like property, knowledge, and testimonial justice underpin social cooperation and political legitimacy. In doing so, it offers social and political philosophers a way to explain both the persistence of ideas and institutions and the grounds on which they can be criticized.
coordination, genealogy, history, Hume, Nietzsche, political philosophy
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