Hello.

I teach philosophy at King's College London. From 2018-2020, I was Professor of Social and Political Theory at the European University Institute. Before joining the Philosophy Department at King’s College London (in 2007), I was a Randall Dillard Research Fellow at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge (2005-2007). My main areas of research are in contemporary moral, legal, and political philosophy, though I also have interests in the history of early-modern and modern political thought. 

You can find my cv here.

​Research.

I have recently published a book entitled Humanity Without Dignity: Moral Equality, Respect, and Human Rights (Harvard University Press, 2017). Most who have written on moral equality have begun by asking: What is the basis of our equal moral worth? They have then sought answers in either classical Christian thought or in Kant. I argue that this is a mistake. To understand our commitment to moral equality, we ought to begin by asking: Why and when is it wrong to treat another as an inferior? This shift in perspective leads us away, I argue, from a preoccupation with worth or dignity, and towards a more fine-grained analysis of paradigmatic instances of treating as an inferior, including stigmatization, dehumanization, infantilization, instrumentalization and objectification. I come to the conclusion that our commitment to moral equality is best explained by a rejection of cruelty rather than a celebration of rational capacity. I then trace the impact of this fundamental shift for our understanding of human rights, and the place of anti-discrimination norms in that understanding. For a recently published symposium on the book, see here. Another symposium volume (in European Journal of Political Theory​) is published here. Also see the long essay I have recently written for Die Zeit, and the response from Rainer Forst.

At the moment, I am working on another two monographs. The first, entitled Solidarity: Its Nature, Grounds, and Value (Manchester University Press) will also include four critical essays by (TBA). In that book, I argue that solidarity is not a form of fellow-feeling, a synonym of social justice, or a mere disposition to share resources or aid the needy; rather, it is best understood as a kind of joint action. I also discuss what reasons we might have for acting in solidarity (including the idea of identifying with another on the basis of role, condition, experience, cause, or way of life), and whether and what kind of value acting in solidarity has. The second book,  for Harvard University Press, is entitled The Bounds of Solidarity: International Justice, Reciprocity, and the European Union. The book defends a conception of social justice for the European Union, which is perhaps the most ambitious — and, at the moment, precarious — project of supra-, trans-, and inter-national solidarity in the world today. I argue that the concept of reciprocity provides a powerful basis on which to construct such a conception, and apply the theory to a number of issue areas, including refugee policy and the free movement of persons, economic and monetary union, and enlargement and exit. This research is supported by a 5-year ERC Consolidator Grant entitled ​Solidarity in Europe. You can find more details about that project here. 

Publications.

I publish mostly in four areas: (1) International and global justice; (2) Moral equality, dignity, and human rights; (3) Practice-dependence; and (4) Solidarity and the European Union. Below, I group publications by topic. For a chronological list, go here. 

International and global justice
(with Sarah Fine) Immigration
in The Handbook of Global Ethics, eds. Darrel Moellendorf and Heather Widdows (Acumen/Routledge 2014), pp. 193-213

On the Relation Between Moral and Distributive Equality
in Cosmopolitanism: For and Against, ed. Gillian Brock (Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 55-75

Is Coercion a Ground of Distributive Justice? 
Law and Philosophy, 35: 271-90 (2016)

​The Irrelevance of Coercion, Imposition, and Framing to Distributive Justice
Philosophy & Public Affairs 40/2: 79-110 (2012)

Global Justice and the Moral Arbitrariness of Birth
The Monist 94/4 (2011): 571-583

Global Justice and the Morality of Coercion, Imposition, and Framing
in Social Justice, Global Dynamics, eds. C. Schemmel, M. Ronzoni, A. Banai (Routledge, 2011), pp. 26-46

Global Justice, Reciprocity, and the State
Philosophy & Public Affairs 35/1: 2-39 (2007) 

Moral equality, dignity, and human rights
Humanity without Dignity: Moral Equality, Respect, and Human Rights
Harvard University Press (2017)

Précis of Humanity without Dignity and Reply
Philosophy and Public Issues 8: 3-10, 89-106 (2019)

Human Rights in a Kantian Key 
Kantian Review 24: 249-261 (2019)

Structural Injustice and Individual Responsibility
Journal of Social Philosophy 49: 461-83 (2018)

Beyond the Political-Orthodox Divide on Human Rights: The Broad View
in Human Rights: Moral or Political?, ed. Adam Etinson (Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 174-200

Rights and Interests in Ripstein’s Kant
in Freedom and Force: Essays on Kant’s Legal Philosophy, eds. Sari Kisilevsky and Martin Stone (Oxford: Hart, 2017), pp. 71-91

Why there Cannot be a Truly Kantian Theory of Human Rights 
in Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, eds. Rowan Cruft and Massimo Renzo (Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 671-91

Scottish Constructivism and the Right to Justification
in Justice, Democracy, and the Right to Justification, ed. David Owen (Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), pp. 29-65

Are Moral Rights Necessary for the Justification of International Legal Human Rights? 
Ethics & International Affairs 30: 471-81 (2016)

Can the Innate Right to Freedom Alone Ground a System of Public and Private Rights? 
European Journal of Philosophy 40/3: 60-9 (2012)

Practice-dependence
How Practices Matter
Journal of Political Philosophy 24: 3-23 (2016)

Justice and the Priority of Politics to Morality
Journal of Political Philosophy 36/2: 137-64 (2008) 

Normative Political Theory: A Flight from Reality? 
in Political Thought and International Relations, ed. D. Bell (Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 219-240

Solidarity and the European Union
Debating the EU’s Raison d’Être: On the Relation Between Justice and Legitimacy
Journal of Common Market Studies 57: 13-27 (2019)

“Feed them first, then ask virtue of them”: Broadening and deepening freedom of movement
in Debating European Citizenship, Rainer Bauböck (Springer Verlag, 2018), pp. 223-229

​Non-Discrimination, Free Movement, and In-Work Benefits in the European Union’ 
in European Journal of Political Theory 16: 143-163 (2017)

Solidarity as Joint Action 
Journal of Applied Philosophy 32: 340-59 (2016)

Solidarity in the European Union
Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 33: 213-41 (2013)

Solidarity in the European Union: Problems and Prospects
in The Philosophical Foundations of European Union Law, eds. Julie Dickson and Pavlos Eleftheriadis (Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 384-412

Justice and the Free Movement of Persons: Educational Mobility in the EU and the US
in Leadership and Global Justice, eds. D. Hicks and T. Williamson (Palgrave, 2012), pp. 131-157

On Democracy and the “Public Interest” in the European Union
in Wolfgang Streeck and Renate Mainz, eds., Die Reformierbarkeit der Demokratie. Innovationen und Blockaden (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2002) (with Andrew Moravcsik), pp. 122-51

Other topics...
Democratic Control in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism
Journal of Applied Philosophy 36: 212-16 (2019)

Teaching.

At KCL, I teach a range of modules, from the first-year introduction to political philosophy to more advanced topics in political and moral philosophy, such as on the concept of moral equality. I  supervise students in a wide range of topics within moral, legal, and political, but most of them work within one or more of the four areas listed above. 

andrea sangiovanni : andrea dot sangiovanni at kcl dot ac dot uk