Articles:
1. “Poverty and Structural Injustice in Kant’s Theory of Right”
Philosophers’ Imprint (forthcoming)
Kant argues that states should tax the rich to provide for the poor. Commentators have long struggled to reconcile this claim with Kant’s staunch freedom-based defense of property rights. Poverty obviously hinders the poor’s welfare, but why does Kant think it violates their freedom? This paper presents a new answer to this question and shows the relevance of that answer to contemporary debates about economic inequality. Against the widely-held view that for Kant poverty violates freedom because it allows rich people to dominate poor people, I argue that Kant understands poverty as a structural injustice which arises when the poor cannot participate in the institutions of ownership necessary for free interaction. A Kantian account of structural injustice, I maintain, can speak across the divide between libertarians and egalitarians. The Kantian account can do so because it is based on the value of freedom, a value celebrated by both sides.
2. “What is Provisional Right?” (with Martin Stone)
The Philosophical Review (2022) [pdf][Published version]
Kant maintains that while claims to property are morally possible in a state of nature, such claims are merely “provisional”; they become “conclusive” only in a civil condition involving political institutions. Kant’s commentators find this thesis puzzling, since it seems to assert a natural right to property alongside a commitment to property’s conventionality. We resolve this apparent contradiction. Provisional right is not a special kind of right. Instead, it marks the imperfection of an action (that of acquiring ordinary rights) where public authorization is lacking. Provisional right thereby functions as a methodological device in a sequential elucidation of the moral basis of public law. To develop this reading, we first explain Kant’s two-step account of property rights—his division between ‘having’ and ‘acquiring.’ Then we explain what is involved in a sequential exposition of “right” more generally.
3. “Republicanism and Structural Domination”
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (2021), vol. 102 (2021) [pdf]
What is domination? According to a leading strand of republican political philosophy, a person is dominated when under the unconstrained power of another. Call this the dyadic conception of domination, since it involves a two-person relation. I argue that domination is better understood structurally. Structural domination is domination by institutions. Rather than a master dominating a slave and a boss dominating a worker (as in dyadic domination), structural domination holds that the institution of slavery dominates the slave and labor law dominates the worker. Without the structural conception, I contend, one misdescribes the power dynamics of paradigm cases of domination.
4. “Freedom and Poverty in the Kantian State”
European Journal of Philosophy, vol. 26 (2018) [pdf] [link]
The coercive authority of the Kantian state is rationally grounded in the ideal of equal external freedom, which is realized when each individual can choose and act without being constrained by another’s will. This ideal does not seem like it can justify state-mandated economic redistribution. For if one is externally free just as long as one can choose and act without being constrained by another, then only direct slavery, serfdom, or other systems of overt control seem to threaten external freedom. Yet Kant endows the freedom-based state with considerable powers of economic redistribution. I argue that recent commentary has misunderstood both Kant’s account of why poverty is a form of freedom-threatening dependence and the extent of the Kantian state’s powers for remedying poverty. Criticizing Arthur Ripstein and the Kantianism of the “Toronto-School,” I argue that the most salient notion of dependence at issue within the Kantian framework is not the direct control of the choice-making capacities of another but asymmetrical influence in a power relationship. For Kant, poverty is fundamentally a problem of structural disempowerment.
5. “The Provisionality of Property Rights in Kant’s Doctrine of Right”
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 48 (2018) [pdf][link]
I criticize two ways of interpreting Kant’s claim that property rights are merely ‘provisional’ in the state of nature. Weak provisionality holds that in the state of nature agents can make rightful claims to property. What is lacking is the institutional context necessary to render their claims secure. By contrast, strong provisionality holds that making property claims in the state of nature wrongs others. I argue for a third view, anticipatory provisionality, according to which state of nature property claims do not wrong others, but anticipate a condition in which the authority to make such claims can no longer be unilaterally determined.
6. “Rousseau on the Ground of Obligation: Reconsidering the Social Autonomy Interpretation”
European Journal of Political Theory, vol. 17 (2018) [pdf][link]
In Rousseau’s Social Contract, political laws are rationally binding because they satisfy the interests that motivate individuals to obey such laws. The later books of Emile justify morality by showing that it is continuous with the natural dispositions of a well-broughtup subject and is thus conducive to genuine happiness. In both the moral and political cases, Rousseau argues for an internal connection between the rational ground of an obligation and the broader aspects of human psychology that are satisfied and expressed by acting from that obligation. Yet, inspired by Kantian philosophy, the recent and influential Social Autonomy interpretation has disjoined rationality and psychology. Criticising this interpretation, I argue that for Rousseau, obligations are justified because they satisfy the demands made by our moral psychology, most notably amour-propre, i.e. the desire to have one’s worth recognised by others.
7. “Autonomy and Happiness in Rousseau’s Justification of the State”
Review of Politics, vol. 78 (2016) [pdf][link]
Recent interpretations of Rousseau suggest that autonomy is the master concept by which to understand his justification of the state. The Rousseauian state is legitimate insofar as it enables individuals to obey only their own wills and thus to be free. Autonomy-based interpretations cannot adequately account for Rousseau’s remarks on the role of the state in securing a collective form of happiness through political community. These interpretations incorrectly construe collective happiness as pertaining only to how civic-minded citizens might be psychologically motivated to obey the state’s dictates, rather than to what makes the state legitimate. By contrast, I offer a new interpretation according to which the Rousseauian state is justified because it enables a mutually constitutive relationship between the autonomy of individuals and the happiness that stems from participation in political community.
8. “Rawls on Meaningful Work and Freedom”
Social Theory and Practice, vol. 41 (2015) [pdf][link]
In this article, I criticize Rawls’s well-ordered society for failing to secure a right to meaningful work. I critically discuss five technical Rawlsian ideas: self-respect, social union, the difference principle, the powers and prerogatives of office, and fair equality of opportunity. I then claim that radical restructuring of the workplace conflicts with Rawls’s individualistic understanding of freedom. Briefly drawing on Hegel, an under-recognized historical influence on Rawls, I then correct Rawls by arguing for a conception of freedom that is internally related to broader solidaristic values associated with meaningful work.
Commissioned Chapters:
9. “Property and Possession in Rousseau’s Social Contract”
The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau’s ‘Social Contract,’ eds. David Williams and Matthew Maguire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. [pdf][link]
Property has a vexed status in Rousseau’s Social Contract. On one hand, Rousseau seems committed to the conventionalist view that property is a creation of law and state. Yet Rousseau also recognizes pre-political dimensions of property, such as a right of first occupancy and a natural entitlement to land through “labor and cultivation.” In this chapter, I contend that Rousseau’s seemingly divergent views on property become less paradoxical once one distinguishes between the rights of others and the more self-regarding aspects of morality. Focusing on the dense section of the Social Contract titled “Of Real Property,” I argue that while Rousseau acknowledges moral obligations governing the use of things, he ultimately holds that persons only have full-fledged property rights within the state. I suggest, moreover, that Rousseau’s attention to both the political and pre-political dimensions of property continues to resonate in contemporary debate.
10. “Kant on Right”
The Oxford Handbook of Kant, eds. Anil Gomes and Andrew Stephenson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024. [pdf][link]
This chapter explains Kant’s theory of Recht—a word that encompasses in translation ‘right’, ‘law’, and ‘justice’. It focuses on two of the theory’s central claims. First, that persons have a right to be independent of others’ control. Second, that independence requires a system of rights, a system which can only be realized through joint membership in the state. Combining these two claims yields an unexpected result: it is the very independence of persons which requires them to become cooperating citizens. In elucidating this idea, the chapter treats Kant’s views on topics such as: freedom of choice and action, the relation between natural rights and positive law, and the role played by both private property and economic redistribution in realizing independence. It also argues that careful attention to Kant’s theory of right warrants major revisions to the traditional understanding of Kantian morality. Against the standard picture of the Kantian moral agent as reasoning entirely on their own, the chapter suggests that for Kant, properly enacting one’s moral duties actually requires collective political institutions. I cannot fulfill my moral duty to aid you unless the law has settled what is mine to give. Kant thus joins an illustrious line of thinkers in treating man as a political animal.
11. “The Body in Kant’s Doctrine of Right”
Philosophical Engagements with Modernity (a Festschrift for Robert Pippin), eds. Daniel Conway and Jon Stewart (Brill, 2025) [penultimate draft]
Kant’s theory of rights says much about property, but little about the body. This is surprising. For Kant holds that the point of rights is to secure freedom from the wills of others, and surely bodily rights are more central to freedom than property. In this paper I develop Kant’s brief remarks on the body in order to explain why the body matters for the politics of freedom. I do so by addressing the worry, familiar to post-Kantian political philosophy, that rights discourse misconstrues the body in overly proprietary or ‘thing-like’ terms, treating the body as what a person possesses rather than as what a person most essentially is. In response, I argue that conceptualizing the body in the possessory vocabulary of rights plays an essential role in securing social equality. Paradoxically, persons must become thing-like to themselves in order to become more fully person-like to others.
12. “Kant on Collective Autonomy: A Reply to Katrin Flikschuh,” in Kant’s Fundamental Assumptions, eds. Colin Marshall and Colin McLear (OUP, 2025)
13. “Kant’s Theory of Property,” in The Philosophy of Recognition: Expanded Perspectives on a Fundamental Concept, eds. Matt Congdon and Thomas Khurana (Routledge, 2025) [penultimate draft]
In the Doctrine of Right Kant argues that the state is morally legitimate because it is necessary to secure property rights. Kant’s emphasis on property might seem to render his political project a form of liberal individualism. To own something, after all, is to be entitled to keep other people away from it. Ownership societies stress self-assertion, not social connection. This article challenges such an individualistic understanding of Kantian property rights. In place of the image of the Kantian property owner as possessive individual, I suggest that Kant’s defense of property is embedded in a broader vision of collective consciousness. The central claim of Kant’s property theory, I argue, is that independent persons must unite in political community. In this sense, Kant’s theory of property is a theory of mutual recognition.
14. “The Conceptual Priority of Structural Injustice”
NOMOS: Structural Injustice, ed. Chiara Cordelli. New York: NYU Press, forthcoming 2026. [penultimate draft]
Talk of structural injustice is ubiquitous in contemporary political discourse, but does the concept make sense? Some detractors claim that injustice paradigmatically involves persons doing things to other people. Since structures don’t themselves act, structures cannot be unjust; they merely play a causal role in enabling people to treat one another unjustly. By this logic, the injustice of a landlord evicting a tenant lies not in the structure which empowered him to do it but in the act itself. Yet attempts to deflate the concept of structural injustice, I argue, overlook that most forms of injustice are matters of illegitimate hierarchy. Hierarchy is not an outcome that can be understood independently from structure. Hierarchy is nothing other than a pattern of social relations. If injustice is hierarchy, and hierarchy is conceptually inextricable from structure, then structural injustice is the primary form of injustice. Talk of structural injustice is vindicated by our nature as recognition-seeking social animals.
Book Reviews:
Christopher Essert, Property Law in the Society of Equals, Law and Philosophy (2025)[pdf][link]
Frederick Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Critique of Inequality: Reconstructing the Second Discourse, European Journal of Philosophy (online first May 2018)[pdf][link]
David James, Rousseau and German Idealism: Freedom, Dependence, Necessity, European Journal of Philosophy, vol. 24 (2016)[pdf][link]
Book Manuscript in Progress:
Kant’s Republicanism: Reconciling Freedom and Equality
Works In Progress:
“Against Gentrification, For Private Property”
“Justice Before Virtue? On Recent Work by Barbara Herman” (for European Journal of Philosophy)
“Reconciling Property with Equality”
“Need and Necessity in Kant’s Doctrine of Right”
“Kant’s State of Nature as an Idea of Reason”
“What’s the Point of Kantian Independence?”