My main research interests lie within five related areas: solidarity, love, and social goods; basic equality and social hierarchy; the relationship between social practices and ethical principles; social and international justice; and EU politics.
My most recent book is a monograph, entitled Solidarity: Nature, Grounds, and Value (Manchester University Press, 2023, available OpenAccess), which also includes five critical essays by Catherine Lu, Sally Scholz, Rainer Forst, Avery Kolers, and Jared Holley. 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. To be in solidarity is to act in solidarity. 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. Juri Viehoff and I have edited a volume on solidarity entitled The Virtue of Solidarity (Oxford University Press, 2024) with essays by me, Juri Viehoff, Tommie Shelby, Carol Gould, Sally Scholz, Rainer Forst, Philippe Van Parijs, Veronique Munoz-Dardé, Alexander Somek, Avery Kolers, Meghan Clark, and Peggy Kohn. I have started to think about different traditions of political thought about solidarity, especially in a post-colonial context, for example in North American, India, Latin America, and Africa. I address a worry about whether providing an account of the nature of solidarity is tantamount to defining the word as it is used in the English language in 'Solidarity as a Social Kind' Political Philosophy (2024).
More recently, I have been exploring the role of solidarity in intimate relationships, such as among friend, lovers, and family members. Why is solidarity so central to the good of personal relationships? Might the value of solidarity in such relationships help to explain why loving relationships are, as most believe, at the heart of any flourishing life? More broadly: What role does adversity play in making a life go well? But how could adversity—which threatens to set back our interests—be essential to well-being? My answers to these questions aims to show that standing by others in the face of adversity is not only instrumentally valuable but also realizes a distinctive, non-instrumental good, which I call Being-With, or Mitsein.
My most recent book is a monograph, entitled Solidarity: Nature, Grounds, and Value (Manchester University Press, 2023, available OpenAccess), which also includes five critical essays by Catherine Lu, Sally Scholz, Rainer Forst, Avery Kolers, and Jared Holley. 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. To be in solidarity is to act in solidarity. 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. Juri Viehoff and I have edited a volume on solidarity entitled The Virtue of Solidarity (Oxford University Press, 2024) with essays by me, Juri Viehoff, Tommie Shelby, Carol Gould, Sally Scholz, Rainer Forst, Philippe Van Parijs, Veronique Munoz-Dardé, Alexander Somek, Avery Kolers, Meghan Clark, and Peggy Kohn. I have started to think about different traditions of political thought about solidarity, especially in a post-colonial context, for example in North American, India, Latin America, and Africa. I address a worry about whether providing an account of the nature of solidarity is tantamount to defining the word as it is used in the English language in 'Solidarity as a Social Kind' Political Philosophy (2024).
More recently, I have been exploring the role of solidarity in intimate relationships, such as among friend, lovers, and family members. Why is solidarity so central to the good of personal relationships? Might the value of solidarity in such relationships help to explain why loving relationships are, as most believe, at the heart of any flourishing life? More broadly: What role does adversity play in making a life go well? But how could adversity—which threatens to set back our interests—be essential to well-being? My answers to these questions aims to show that standing by others in the face of adversity is not only instrumentally valuable but also realizes a distinctive, non-instrumental good, which I call Being-With, or Mitsein.
I have also written a book entitled Humanity Without Dignity (Harvard University Press, 2017) on the idea of basic equality and its relevance to human rights. Name any valued human trait—intelligence, wit, charm, grace, strength—and you will find an inexhaustible variety and complexity in its expression among individuals. Yet we insist that such diversity does not provide grounds for differential treatment at the most basic level. Whatever merit, blame, praise, love, or hate we receive as beings with a particular past and a particular constitution, we are always and everywhere due equal respect merely as persons. But why? Most who attempt to answer this question appeal to the idea that all human beings possess an intrinsic dignity and worth—grounded in our capacities, for example, to reason, reflect, or love—that raises us up in the order of nature. I reject this predominant view. To understand our commitment to basic equality, I argue that we must begin with a consideration not of equality but of inequality. Rather than search for a chimerical value-bestowing capacity possessed to an equal extent by each one of us, we ought to ask: Why and when is it wrong to treat others as inferior? For two symposia on the book, see here and here, and see also this article in Die Zeit. I have continued to write on themes relevant to the book in 'Are We of Equal Moral Worth?' and 'Is There a Thing Called Moral Equality? (And Does It Matter if There Isn’t?)' (see publications for citations).
More recently, I have returned to thinking about the role of social hierarchy in modern politics, especially in the context of the rise of populism. Across nearly all liberal democracies today, there is an increasing divide between the rural and metropolitan, the more educated and less educated, the core and periphery. The divide is not, however, simply economic. It is social as well: people increasingly feel left out, marginalized, looked down upon, contemned, and scorned for being ‘inferior’. When and why are social status hierarchies illegitimate? If we abandon any idea of basic equality (as I suggest we should), on what basis might we criticize them?
More recently, I have returned to thinking about the role of social hierarchy in modern politics, especially in the context of the rise of populism. Across nearly all liberal democracies today, there is an increasing divide between the rural and metropolitan, the more educated and less educated, the core and periphery. The divide is not, however, simply economic. It is social as well: people increasingly feel left out, marginalized, looked down upon, contemned, and scorned for being ‘inferior’. When and why are social status hierarchies illegitimate? If we abandon any idea of basic equality (as I suggest we should), on what basis might we criticize them?