Books
The Possibility of Respect
Oxford University Press, 2025This book defends a radical new theory of respect against the backdrop of a critical analysis of Western claims to moral progress. Drawing from a wide range of typically marginalized voices, it demonstrates the ways that our existing ideas about respect have misled our efforts to validate the equal human dignity of persons.
Dignity: A History
Oxford University Press, 2017The concept of dignity typically brings to mind an idea of moral status that supposedly belongs to all humans equally, and which serves as the basis of human rights. But this moralized meaning of dignity is historically very young.
Ethical Sentimentalism
Cambridge University Press, 2017Co-edited with Karsten R. Stueber. The essays in this volume provide a comprehensive evaluation of the sentimentalist project with a particular eye to this difficulty. Each essay offers critical clarification, innovative answers to central challenges, and new directions for ethical sentimentalism in general.
Forthcoming
The Smithian Mind (2027)
Co-edited with Michelle Schwarze and Nir-Ben Moshe
Book Chapters
“Adam Smith, Political Stability, and the Pull of Sympathy”
The Empathetic Emotions in the History of Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2025)Adam Smith is well known for articulating one of the earliest accounts of empathy in western philosophy, albeit, under the terminology of “sympathy.” However, usually Smith’s account is studied as part of his moral philosophy. So, what role did sympathy play in his political philosophy?
“Empathy and mirror neurons”
The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Empathy (Routledge, 2017)The most influential empirical discovery regarding empathy is the discovery of so-called mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are single-cell neurons that activate during both the execution of certain actions and the observation of those actions. The chapter discusses the claims about emotion mirroring and the uptake for the subject of empathy more generally.
“A Place for Animals? Rethinking the History of Human Dignity”
Animal Dignity: Philosophical Reflections on Non-Human Existence (Bloomsbury, 2023)The concept of dignity typically refers to the basic worth or status that purportedly belongs to all persons equally and is often taken as the normative grounds of universal human rights. Does dignity extend to non-human animals?
“The Authority of Empathy (Or, How to Ground Sentimentalism)”
Ethical Sentimentalism (Cambridge University Press, 2017)When observing or considering the emotions of other people, real or imagined, we sometimes come to feel the same emotions. Or if not exactly the same, close enough to satisfy us that our two emotions—theirs and ours—are “in accord.” Call this the fact of empathy.
“Respect: A History”
Respect: Philosophical Essays (Oxford University Press, 2021)Respect is one of the central concepts in contemporary moral thought. The history behind this idea, however, is not well understood - indeed, it is often misunderstood. This essay sets the record straight.
“From Einfühlung to Empathy: Sympathy in Early Phenomenology and Psychology.”
Sympathy: A History (Oxford University Press, 2015)Since its introduction into English in 1909, as a translation of the German concept Einfühlung (feeling into), “empathy” has had a convoluted relationship to the concept of sympathy. This chapter explains some of this complicated conceptual history.
Articles
“Adam Smith on Dignity and Equality”
British Journal for the History of Philosophy 20, no.1 (2012)
Where exactly should we place Adam Smith in the cannon of classical liberalism? Smith's advocacy of free market economics and defence of religious liberty in The Wealth of Nations suffice for including him somewhere in that tradition.
“Humanity, Sympathy, and the Puzzle of Hume’s Second Enquiry”
British Journal for the History of Philosophy 15, no. 1 (2007)
In existing discussions of human dignity, this is where etymology typically begins, sometimes under the rubric of History. Unfortunately, such musing is generally of marginal value because the author has no critical apparatus against which to frame the question.
“Dignity’s Gauntlet”
Philosophical Perspectives 2, no. 1 (2009)
What does Hume mean by "humanity" in the second Enquiry, and what are we to make of its seeming replacement of "extensive sympathy" as the source of our moral sentiments? And, what happened to the associationist account of sympathy emphasized so keenly in the Treatise?