Legitimacy 4
The Dworkin–Williams Debate: Liberty, Conceptual Integrity, and Tragic Conflict in Politics
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 109 (1): 3–29. 2024. doi:10.1111/phpr.13002
By reconstructing the little-known Dworkin-Williams debate over whether political concepts like liberty and equality can and should be reconciled to avoid conflict, the article explores the nature of political values, the limits of philosophical intervention in politics, the challenge of pluralism, and the conditions for political legitimacy in the face of inevitable conflict and loss.
conceptual engineering, legitimacy, political realism, pluralism, Williams, conceptual change
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Genealogy, Evaluation, and Engineering
The Monist 105 (4): 435–51. By invitation. 2022. doi:10.1093/monist/onac010
Argues that genealogical explanations can be used to evaluate and improve conceptual practices, taking as an example the demand for conceptual innovation around notions of legitimacy created by the increasing power of international institutions.
conceptual engineering, legitimacy, genealogy, ideology critique, conceptual ethics, international institutions
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Theorizing the Normative Significance of Critical Histories for International Law
Journal of the History of International Law 24 (4): 561–587. 2022. With Damian Cueni. doi:10.1163/15718050-12340207
Addresses the question of whether the tainted history of international law should affect our present-day evaluation of it. It argues that critical histories derive their power in three primary ways: by subverting the historical claims that support a practice’s authority, by failing to meet the normative expectations readers bring to the past, and by tracing the functional continuities that link past problems to the present. The framework explains how history can be normatively significant even when its direct influence on legal argument is unclear.
genealogy, historiography, legitimacy, legal philosophy, methodology, political theory
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Whence the Demand for Ethical Theory?
American Philosophical Quarterly 58 (2): 135–46. 2021. With Damian Cueni. doi:10.2307/48614001
Offers a practical derivation of the need for public and judicial reasoning to take a more discursive and consistent form than private deliberation (a theme more fully explored in ch. 10 of my second book).
public reason, ethical theory, genealogy, metaethics, legitimacy, conceptual change
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