orsi[at]ut.ee

Welcome! Tere tulemast! Benvenuti!

My main philosophical interests lie in ethics, particularly in meta-ethics, value theory, moral psychology, and the history of ethics. 

As of 01.09.2022 I am Associate Professor in Theoretical Ethics (formerly in Practical Philosophy) at the Philosophy Department of the University of Tartu, Estonia. In 2017 I received a four-year Exploratory Personal Research Grant from ETAg, for a project on "Practical Metaethics". In early 2013 I received a four-year Start-up Personal Research Grant from the Estonian Research Council, for a project on "The Unity of Normative Discourse". In 2010-13 I was a Mobilitas Postdoctoral Researcher at the same university. Previously I had lectured at the University of Reading (2008-9). I received my PhD in Philosophy in December 2007 from Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy. In 2007 I also received an MPhil from the University of Reading. I did my BA and MA in philosophy at Università La Sapienza in Rome, during which I spent more than one year as a visiting student in Reading (yes, again), where I wrote most of my MA thesis.

RESEARCH

Books and special issues

The Guise of the Good: A Philosophical History was published by Routledge in 2023. Here is a video where I introduce the book. Here is a booklist where I recommend other books alongside mine. Here is a review by Amir Saemi.

In 2021 my edited special issue on The Modern Guise of the Good came out in Philosophical Explorations (24,1). My editorial can be found on pp. 1-4. In 2024 it was republished as a collection for Routledge.

In 2015 my book Value Theory was published by Bloomsbury. Here is a review by A. Garcia.

Articles

Some of the following articles can be found by clicking on the links below. Or feel free to email me for a copy. For abstracts see my page on PhilPapers.

And here is a reply to our paper by Wlodek Rabinowicz and Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-020-01558-0 

          And here is Krister Bykvist's reply to this paper.

Reviews

Here is a copy of my PhD thesis (2007), "Normativity and Value", in which I critically examined the fitting attitude (or buck-passing) account of value and some of its rivals.

TEACHING AND SUPERVISION

I have taught on general meta-ethics, moral realism, value theory, Mill's utilitarianism, Hume's ethics, moral particularism, the philosophy and ethics of sexuality, moral psychology.

Here is a link to the courses I currently teach.

Here is a syllabus I have used for my meta-ethics courses.

Here is a syllabus for my courses on the philosophy and ethics of sexuality.

I enjoy supervising students in any of these and nearby areas. I have supervised the PhD thesis of Sergei Sazonov "The Entrepreneurial Theory of Ownership" (defended 2024) as well as many MA research theses (see here). I currently supervise two PhD students: Stijn van Gorkum (prescriptive metaethics and ethical naturalism), Merike Reiljan (empathy).

I have been Program Director of our philosophy MA and PhD programs in Tartu (2018-2021) and again from 2024.

I have served as coordinator for BalPhiN (Baltic Philosophy Network), a network comprising several Baltic and Nordic philosophy departments, mainly aimed at organizing intensive classes for MA students.