Most recent papers:

• Philanthropy for the Disenfranchised.
  Jacob Barrett.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. 9 days ago
  ["Philosophy &Public Affairs, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nPhilanthropy has an uneasy relationship with democracy. It distributes decision‐making power plutocratically, in proportion to wealth. It allows unelected, unaccountable, and often untrustworthy individuals to shape social outcomes. And it does so in domains where democracy should be authoritative. Yet, at the same time, philanthropy does much good, and hardly anyone would claim we should eliminate it altogether. So how can we make philanthropy consistent with democracy? In this article, I propose a new answer to this question. I argue that while democratic critics are right to worry about much current philanthropy, there is an important class of philanthropy that is not only highly beneficial, but that also, so far from undermining or conflicting with democracy, can complement or even enhance it. I call this “philanthropy for the disenfranchised,” and argue that we can resolve the tension between philanthropy and democracy by encouraging this sort of philanthropy while discouraging forms of philanthropic abuse and folly. I also outline a program for social reform that involves differentiating the institutions surrounding philanthropy to make them better perform this role, which I contrast with the more familiar programs of democratization and effective altruism.\n"]

  May 01, 2026   doi: 10.1111/papa.70023   open full text
• Affirmative Action and Liberal Rights.
  Bas van der Vossen.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. April 06, 2026
  ["Philosophy &Public Affairs, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nAt the heart of liberalism lie two seemingly conflicting ideals: a commitment to robust individual rights and an ideal of equal opportunity. The former offers rights‐holders discretion in terms of with whom to cooperate, who to hire, admit, and so forth. The latter is often understood to require policies of affirmative action. This conflict is visible in the recent US Supreme Court Decision Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard University, which firmly decided the matter on behalf of liberal rights. However, such a resolution shifts the burden of injustice on those who are negatively affected by it. And this seems unfair. At the same time, affirmative action threatens to shift these burdens entirely to employers and other applicants. And liberal rights are meant to protect us from being made to bear such burdens. This essay offers a solution to this problem by formulating a rights‐based defense of affirmative action policies. According to this argument, affirmative action policies are fair when they realign the actual (injustice‐tainted) distribution of opportunities with the distribution to which people are entitled as a matter of their social positions. This solution is fair since rights‐holders have no just claims against lacking opportunities they had no right to enjoy in the first place, and victims of injustice have no more claim to redress than what their rights were supposed to yield. The argument justifies significant policies of affirmative action with respect to hiring, admissions, and so forth, in ways that remain fully consistent with even the strongest form of liberal rights.\n"]

  April 06, 2026   doi: 10.1111/papa.70020   open full text
• Affect, Autonomy, Authenticity, and the Assessment of Decision‐Making Capacity: The Problem of Tyrannical Coherence.
  Joe Gough.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. April 01, 2026
  ["Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 54, Issue 2, Page 68-82, Spring 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThere are cases of psychiatric disorder where affective states produce severely self‐destructive behavior. Sufferers do not appear to be making autonomous decisions, and appear to be severely impaired in their decision‐making capacity. Suffers of these kinds of cases of these kinds of disorders fall into a “gray area” in the law. If this gray area is to be avoided, the law requires clearer criteria for determining how affect can undermine autonomy. Existing “procedural” accounts of autonomy that explicitly set out to deal with how affective states can undermine decision‐making are unable to deal with a clinically significant class of such cases. In this class of cases, autonomy is undermined by an affective state that is relevantly coherent with the rest of the person's affective states and attitudes, and has relevantly inoffensive origins. The relevant affective state nevertheless appears to “hijack” the person, and to rule over them “tyrannically.” I argue for a necessary condition on autonomy amenable to a procedural account, non‐tyranny, according to which one is autonomous with respect to a decision only if one has the ability to resist the influence of any given affective state on that decision.\n"]

  April 01, 2026   doi: 10.1111/papa.70010   open full text
• Second‐Order Political Equality and the Limits of Civic Accountability: A Reply to Giavazzi.
  Aylon Manor.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. April 01, 2026
  ["Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 54, Issue 2, Page 83-93, Spring 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis paper critically examines Michele Giavazzi's recent argument for epistemic constraints on voting (ECV), which attempts to reconcile such constraints with democratic equality through a noninstrumental justification based on civic accountability. I argue that Giavazzi's account fails on two grounds: first, it violates what I call second‐order political equality by privileging a particular conception of voting over reasonable alternatives in pluralistic societies; second, justifying institutional constraints requires epistemic duties with substantial normative force, and establishing this force depends heavily on instrumentalist assumptions about efficacy. This creates dialectical difficulties for Giavazzi's reconciliation project, as the strength needed to justify ECV reintroduces tensions with egalitarian values that his noninstrumental framing was meant to avoid. These problems suggest that attempts to reconcile epistemic constraints with political equality face deeper challenges than Giavazzi acknowledges. This, in turn, points toward the need for more modest approaches that focus on the practical requirements of maintaining democratic cooperation rather than deriving institutional constraints from contested theories about voting's essential purpose.\n"]

  April 01, 2026   doi: 10.1111/papa.70011   open full text
• The Objective Value of Childrearing.
  Danielle Levitan.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. April 01, 2026
  ["Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 54, Issue 2, Page 94-104, Spring 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nMost countries legally recognize the right and duty to raise the child one has carried and given birth to, (i) reflecting a traditional legal presumption (despite widespread abuse and neglect) that parents should be granted wide‐ranging legal rights with respect to their minor children. What interests me here is the moral aspect of the right to childrearing: does childrearing have a value that is objective, and if so, why? In this paper, I explore a theory of intrinsic value that is consistent with an objective stance on childrearing. The theory enables us to make sense of the belief that something can be objectively good as an end‐in‐itself even if a person derives no pleasure from it, thus grounding the distinction between the good of childrearing and the pleasure one might gain from it. This paper is divided into three parts. Section 1 explores the concept of intrinsic goodness. I explain what I mean by ‘childrearing’ as distinguished from procreation, and argue that childrearing is both an objective and intrinsic good. Section 2 clarifies how this works, maintaining that the intimate relationship between parent and child makes the parent's life richer and more worthwhile. (ii) I argue further that childrearing is a component of well‐being rather than an instrumental cause of it. Section 3 sketches three types of theories outlined by Derek Parfit (iii) regarding what is good for a person: hedonistic theories, desire‐fulfilment theories, and objective‐list theories (iv).\n"]

  April 01, 2026   doi: 10.1111/papa.70012   open full text
• Defensive Desert.
  William L. Bell.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. April 01, 2026
  ["Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 54, Issue 2, Page 105-115, Spring 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nWhen aiming to justify the infliction of harm upon a culpable wrongdoer, the notion of desert most readily finds its home within the context of punishment. Thus, according to one dominant theory of punishment, retributivism, a wrongdoer deserves the hard treatment constitutive of punishment. In this paper, I argue that desert can play a role in helping justify certain types of defensive action. Specifically, I aim to show how desert‐based reasons can help justify seemingly futile defensive efforts. Importantly, this justification does not stem from the idea that the victim of an attack may “draw against punishment” in seeking to avert a threat, but rather from the belief that culpable aggressors deserve to be resisted.\n\n"]

  April 01, 2026   doi: 10.1111/papa.70013   open full text
• What Can the State of Nature Justify?
  Arthur (Hongyang) Yang.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. April 01, 2026
  ["Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 54, Issue 2, Page 116-128, Spring 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nSocial contract theory is one of the most popular approaches to political justification. While the state of nature account in social contract theory is generally invoked to justify the state's authority, I argue in this paper that no extant account succeeds in doing so. The primary reason, I argue, is that extant state of nature theories fail to capture an empirically plausible account of human life under stateless conditions. This failure undermines the justificatory force of these theories. Instead, I argue that extant state of nature accounts are best understood as attempts to justify morality or authority in general.\n"]

  April 01, 2026   doi: 10.1111/papa.70014   open full text
• Is a More‐Than‐Minimal State the Meta‐Utopia?
  Carlo Ludovico Cordasco.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. March 30, 2026
  ["Philosophy &Public Affairs, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nPart III of Anarchy, State, and Utopia defends the minimal state as a framework for utopia. On Bader's reconstruction, this defense contains two justificatory strands: a common ground argument, which shows the minimal state to be compatible with the widest range of utopian associations, and an approximation argument, which holds it to be the framework most likely to generate such associations in practice. I argue that the convergence of these two strands on the minimal state depends on the associational menu being exogenous to institutional structure. Once we recognize that founding has the structure of a public goods problem, this assumption fails: the menu is shaped by the incentive environment a framework creates for potential founders, and a minimal state that does nothing to coordinate founding may produce a narrower and less representative range of associations than the approximation argument supposes. Combined with the rights‐based justification of the minimal state in Parts I and II, this divergence generates a three‐way trade‐off that Nozick's framework does not resolve.\n"]

  March 30, 2026   doi: 10.1111/papa.70021   open full text
• Stay Together for the Kids.
  Connor K. Kianpour.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. February 26, 2026
  ["Philosophy &Public Affairs, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nLiberal political morality prizes the freedom to enter and exit intimate associations, and romantic relationships are often treated as paradigmatic sites of this freedom. Yet when romantic partners are also coparents, exit can deprive children of established caregiving structures on which their welfare, security, and developing autonomy depend. This paper argues that children hold positive associational rights to the continuity of such structures once they have been conferred. These rights generate defeasible relational obligations for coparents to sustain a joint caregiving partnership, even at significant personal cost. Crucially, the obligations defended here are not grounded in biological parenthood or in mere interests in an intact family from the outset. They arise only in cases of deprivation, where a child's life has already been organized around a shared caregiving framework, and not in cases of mere absence. By distinguishing relational obligations from other parental duties, the paper develops a liberal yet child‐centered account of romantic exit, according to which children's claims to continuity can justifiably constrain adults' freedom to disassociate.\n"]

  February 26, 2026   doi: 10.1111/papa.70019   open full text
• Democracy and the Academy.
  Hrishikesh Joshi.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. February 23, 2026
  ["Philosophy &Public Affairs, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis paper defends a provocative thesis: namely, that the present structure and composition of the academy undermine democratic legitimacy. Political philosophers have often stressed that universal suffrage by itself is not sufficient for such legitimacy. In these critiques, they have focused on the disproportionate power of the wealthy to shape politics and public discourse. I argue here that there is a deeper and relatively unnoticed problem in this vein: the university system exerts enormous power in shaping the perspectives of the public through a variety of means. Yet, the academy is democratically unaccountable for all practical purposes. Moreover, as has been documented in a range of empirical work, it is politically homogeneous. As a result, I argue, this asymmetric power undermines the legitimacy of the political system, viewed as a whole. This can be seen from within three influential accounts of democratic legitimacy: republicanism, public reason liberalism, and consent theories. The paper concludes by exploring some potential remedies in the service of moving towards democratic legitimacy.\n"]

  February 23, 2026   doi: 10.1111/papa.70018   open full text
• Locke(d) in a Dilemma: The Problem of Territorial Authority.
  Samantha L. Fritz.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. January 20, 2026
  ["Philosophy &Public Affairs, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nIn Lockean social contract theory, the state exercises its authority over territory through property rights. The state has territorial authority over the property it and its citizens claim. This authority is legitimate when the state has the consent of the governed and effectively governs. In this paper, I argue that there is an irreconcilable tension between these concepts of authority and legitimacy. I argue that because Locke's view is property‐based, his view cannot justify more than a piecemeal territory. A piecemeal territory, however, makes the government's job of protecting life, liberty, and property nearly impossible. If we push to have a unified account of territory, the consent of the governed is undermined. Either the Lockean loses legitimacy by failing to protect life, liberty, and property, or they lose legitimacy by failing to have the consent of the governed. If I am correct, then the Lockean has to give up either legitimacy or territorial authority—neither of which is a workable option. This leaves us with having to either look elsewhere to justify territorial authority, give up the idea of territorial authority, or explore political alternatives to the state.\n"]

  January 20, 2026   doi: 10.1111/papa.70017   open full text
• What Does Trans Inclusion in a Liberal State Require?
  Holly Lawford‐Smith.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. January 20, 2026
  ["Philosophy &Public Affairs, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nOne of the most prominent minority groups today is trans people. Those who see themselves as fighting for trans rights have tended to take these to include a right to legal recognition by the state, and social treatment by fellow citizens, as the sex of identification. These rights claims have been given substantial legal and institutional uptake. If trans people's full inclusion in public life requires legal recognition and social treatment as the sex of identification, then this is merely a description of things being as they should be. But if trans people's inclusion within the liberal state does not require these things, then this may be a description of a violation of liberal neutrality, the enforcement by the state of a contested and controversial conception of the good; and a tyranny of the majority, the weight of social opinion being pressed against those who want to talk about (what they see as) the fact that things are not as they should be. One way to gain some clarity on whether things are as they should be or not is to carefully consider the principles that liberal democratic states have used to secure the full inclusion in public life of other minority groups, and their application to trans people. I'll consider in particular toleration, collective and individual exemptions, and full accommodation; as they have applied to religious minorities, women, sexual orientation minorities, black people, and people with physical disabilities.\n"]

  January 20, 2026   doi: 10.1111/papa.70016   open full text
• Does Drill Rap Cause Violence, and, Even if it Does, Should it Be Censored?
  Tareeq Jalloh.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. January 07, 2026
  ["Philosophy &Public Affairs, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThe critique that rap causes violence (causal claim) goes back as far as the 1980s, but today drill rappers are having their freedoms restricted based on instances of a causal claim. Police in the UK regularly remove drill videos from social media and streaming platforms, and drillers are being restricted from making music and associating with people via criminal behavior orders based on the claim that drill music causes serious violence. If this causal claim is true, it provides potential grounds for such restrictions on drillers. This paper argues against censoring drill on the assumption that it causes violence for three reasons. First, even according to the most charitable rendition of the causal claim, there is insufficient evidence to support it. Second, there are less speech‐restrictive and more effective approaches to violence reduction than censorship‐oriented approaches. Third, critics should not be advancing the causal claim due to its racist public meaning.\n"]

  January 07, 2026   doi: 10.1111/papa.70015   open full text
• Free Speech as a Special Right.
  Leslie Kendrick.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. September 27, 2017
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  September 27, 2017   doi: 10.1111/papa.12087   open full text
• Future People, the Non‐Identity Problem, and Person‐Affecting Principles.
  Derek Parfit.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. September 27, 2017
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  September 27, 2017   doi: 10.1111/papa.12088   open full text
• Acting in Combination.
  Robert E. Goodin.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. September 27, 2017
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  September 27, 2017   doi: 10.1111/papa.12090   open full text
• Aggregation, Complaints, and Risk.
  Joe Horton.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. May 15, 2017
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  May 15, 2017   doi: 10.1111/papa.12084   open full text
• Partiality and Retrospective Justification.
  Bernhard Salow.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. May 15, 2017
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  May 15, 2017   doi: 10.1111/papa.12083   open full text
• The Impossibility of Republican Freedom.
  Thomas W. Simpson.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. May 15, 2017
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  May 15, 2017   doi: 10.1111/papa.12082   open full text
• What We Owe to Hypocrites: Contractualism and the Speaker‐Relativity of Justification.
  Johann Frick.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. January 11, 2017
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  January 11, 2017   doi: 10.1111/papa.12076   open full text
• Property and Homelessness.
  Christopher Essert.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. January 11, 2017
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  January 11, 2017   doi: 10.1111/papa.12080   open full text
• Neither Perfectionism nor Political Liberalism.
  Japa Pallikkathayil.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. December 27, 2016
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  December 27, 2016   doi: 10.1111/papa.12077   open full text
• Moral Grandstanding.
  Justin Tosi, Brandon Warmke.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. December 27, 2016
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  December 27, 2016   doi: 10.1111/papa.12075   open full text
• Permissibility in a World of Wrongdoing.
  Victor Tadros.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. December 23, 2016
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  December 23, 2016   doi: 10.1111/papa.12074   open full text
• Treating People as Tools.
  Ketan H. Ramakrishnan.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. December 23, 2016
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  December 23, 2016   doi: 10.1111/papa.12073   open full text
• Whether and Where to Give.
  Theron Pummer.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. August 22, 2016
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  August 22, 2016   doi: 10.1111/papa.12065   open full text
• Does the Egalitarian Rationale for Campaign Finance Reform Succeed?
  Ryan Pevnick.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. August 22, 2016
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  August 22, 2016   doi: 10.1111/papa.12064   open full text
• Does “Ought” Imply “Feasible”?
  Nicholas Southwood.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. August 22, 2016
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  August 22, 2016   doi: 10.1111/papa.12067   open full text
• The Myth of the Optional War: Why States Are Required to Wage the Wars They Are Permitted to Wage.
  Kieran Oberman.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. December 10, 2015
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  December 10, 2015   doi: 10.1111/papa.12063   open full text
• Experimental Animals.
  Philip Kitcher.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. December 10, 2015
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  December 10, 2015   doi: 10.1111/papa.12060   open full text
• On the Distinctive Procedural Wrong of Colonialism.
  Laura Valentini.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. December 10, 2015
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  December 10, 2015   doi: 10.1111/papa.12057   open full text
• Reflection and Responsibility.
  Pamela Hieronymi.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. April 24, 2014
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  April 24, 2014   doi: 10.1111/papa.12024   open full text
• Orwell's Battle with Brittain: Vicarious Liability for Unjust Aggression.
  Victor Tadros.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. April 24, 2014
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  April 24, 2014   doi: 10.1111/papa.12025   open full text
• Rational Persuasion as Paternalism.
  George Tsai.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. April 24, 2014
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  April 24, 2014   doi: 10.1111/papa.12026   open full text
• What's Wrong with Colonialism.
  Lea Ypi.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. June 19, 2013
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  June 19, 2013   doi: 10.1111/papa.12014   open full text
• Immigration, Jurisdiction, and Exclusion.
  Michael Blake.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. June 19, 2013
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  June 19, 2013   doi: 10.1111/papa.12012   open full text
• Exploitation, Vulnerability, and Social Domination.
  Nicholas Vrousalis.
  Philosophy &amp Public Affairs. June 19, 2013
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  June 19, 2013   doi: 10.1111/papa.12013   open full text