Political Philosophy

Advanced

Graduate level. Metatheory, technical variants, and disputes that are still open, with the primary literature named rather than gestured at.

Luck Egalitarianism and Relational EqualityPlanned
Whether equality corrects for disadvantage nobody chose or instead removes standing hierarchies between citizens
20 min
Public Reason and LegitimacyPlanned
The demand that coercive law be justifiable in terms citizens holding different doctrines could accept
22 min
Political Liberalism Against PerfectionismPlanned
Whether a state may promote a conception of the good life, and what neutrality could mean if it may not
22 min
Deliberative, Epistemic, and Agonistic DemocracyPlanned
Three rival pictures of what democracy is for: reasoned exchange, tracking correct answers, and conflict that is never settled
22 min
The Boundary ProblemPlanned
Democracy decides questions by a vote of the people, and cannot decide by a vote who the people are
22 min
Jurisprudence: Hart, Dworkin, and Hard CasesPlanned
The rule of recognition against law as an interpretive practice, and what each says a judge does when the rules run out
26 min
Philosophical AnarchismPlanned
The claim that no state is legitimate in the sense required for a general duty to obey, and that this changes less than it sounds
22 min
Global Justice and CosmopolitanismPlanned
Whether duties of distributive justice stop at the border or reach everyone, and what shared institutions have to do with it
22 min
Immigration and Open BordersPlanned
Arguments from freedom of movement set against a political community's claimed right to select who enters
20 min
Theories of ExploitationPlanned
Rival accounts built on surplus extraction, unfair terms of exchange, and taking advantage of vulnerability
22 min
Ideal and Non-Ideal TheoryPlanned
What is gained and lost by theorising justice on the assumption that everyone complies and conditions are favourable
20 min
Critical Race Theory and Feminist Political PhilosophyPlanned
Structural accounts of injustice, the racial contract as a rereading of contract theory, and the challenge to the public and private divide
24 min
Social Ontology and Collective AgencyPlanned
When a group counts as an agent in its own right, and the aggregation paradox that makes group judgment more than a sum of votes
24 min
Property, Taxation, and RedistributionPlanned
Whether pre-tax holdings are a baseline that taxation departs from, and what each answer implies about redistributive claims
22 min
Markets and Their LimitsPlanned
Which goods should not be for sale, and whether the objection is to the terms of exchange or to what selling them expresses
22 min