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.
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.
(unpublished) The ethics of sex and power asymmetries
(2023). Bernard Williams on the Guise of the Good. European Journal of Philosophy. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ejop.12897
(2023). Happy Egrets Strike Back? In: Garcia, A., Gunnemyr, M. & Werkmäster, J. (Ed.). Value, Morality & Social Reality: Essays dedicated to Dan Egonsson, Björn Petersson & Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen. (297−307). Lund: Lund University Press
(2023). https://tartu.postimees.ee/7721324/francesco-orsi-moni-eesti-tava-sokeerib-itaallast/
(2022). (with Andrés G. Garcia) The new explanatory objection to the fitting attitude account of value. Philosophia, 50, 1845–1860. https://rdcu.be/cUYPg
(2021). Perverse Reasons. Philosophy, 96 (3), 457-480. DOI: 10.1017/S003181912100005X.
(2021). Mill's proof and the guise of the good. Philosophical Explorations, 24 (1), 93-105. DOI: 10.1080/13869795.2020.1868117.
(2021). (with Andrés G. Garcia) The explanatory objection to the fitting attitude analysis of value. Philosophical Studies, 178 (4), 1207–1221. https://rdcu.be/b4brD
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
(2020). Meta-ethical Disagreements. Trames Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 24 (3), 423−439. DOI: 10.3176/tr.2020.3.09.
Hume and the guise of the bad. Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 18 (1), 39−56, 2020. 10.3366/jsp.2020.0254
https://blog.ut.ee/health-as-a-value-health-as-a-right/. In Estonian: https://novaator.err.ee/1081075/francesco-orsi-tervis-trumpas-kriisi-toel-ule-teised-pohioigused (April-May 2020)
Kuidas antropotseenis õigesti talitada [How to behave rightly in the Anthropocene]. Vikerkaar 9, September 2019. https://www.vikerkaar.ee/archives/25223
Seks, surm ja perverssus [Sex, Death and Perversion]. Akadeemia 7, 1301−1312, 2019.
Mill and Sexual Reform. Think 17 (50): 101-112, 2018.
Normative Judgment and Rational Requirements: A Reply to Ridge. Analytic Philosophy 59 (2):281-290, 2018.
Ethical Non-naturalism and the Guise of the Good, Topoi 37 (4): 581-590, 2018.
The Guise of the Good. Philosophy Compass, 10 (10): 714-724, 2015.
Climate Change and the Intuition of Neutrality. In M. Di Paola & G. Pellegrino (eds.), Canned Heat. Ethics and Politics of Global Climate Change, Routledge, 2014, 160-176.
Fitting Attitudes and Solitary Goods. Mind, 122 (487):687-698, 2013.
And here is Krister Bykvist's reply to this paper.
How to be a friend of absolute goodness. Philosophia. Philosophical Quarterly of Israel, 41 (4):1237-1251, 2013.
What’s Wrong with Moorean Buck-Passing? Philosophical Studies 164 (3): 727-746, 2013.
Moral Judgment, Sensitivity To Reasons, and the Multi-system View. The Baltic International Yearbook Of Cognition, Logic And Communication 7:1-19, 2012.
Sidgwick and the Morality of Purity. Revue d’Etudes Benthamiennes, 10, 2012. http://etudes-benthamiennes.revues.org/604
David Ross, Ideal Utilitarianism, and the Intrinsic Value of Acts. Journal for the History of Analytic Philosophy, 1, 2, 2012, pp. 1-21. http://jhaponline.org/journals/jhap/article/view/1348/1252
The Dualism of the Practical Reason: Some Interpretations and Responses. Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, X, 2008, 2, pp. 19-41. (http://www2.units.it/~etica/2008_2/ORSI.pdf)
Obligations of Nearness. The Journal of Value Inquiry, 42(1), 2008, pp. 1-21.
Naturalism and the Buck-Passing View of Value. Philosophical Writings, no. 32, Summer 2006, pp. 58-77.
Reviews
R. Rowland, The Normative and the Evaluative. The Buck-passing Account of Value. Philosophical Quarterly. Doi: pqz075, https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqz075
K.C.Elliott, A Tapestry of Values. Acta Baltica Historiae et Philosophiae Scientiarum, 5, 2, 116-121, 2017. DOI: 10.11590/abhps.2017.2.06
I. Hirose and A. Reisner (eds.), Weighing and Reasoning. Themes from the Philosophy of John Broome. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 19, 3, 805−807, 2016. Doi:10.1007/s10677-015-9657-6
Russ Shafer-Landau, ed., Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volumes 5 & 6. Philosophy in Review 33 (1):77-81, 2013.
Lorenzo Greco, L’io morale: David Hume e l’etica contemporanea [The Moral Self: David Hume and Contemporary Ethics]. Hume Studies, Volume 34, Number 1, April 2009, pp. 159-162.
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 many MA research theses (see here). I currently supervise two PhD students: Stijn van Gorkum (ethical naturalism), Sergei Sazonov (entitlement theories of property rights).
I have been Program Director of our philosophy MA and PhD programs in Tartu (2018-2021) and will be 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.