Publications
[BR] "Review of A Social History of Analytic Philospohy," Spectre (online). 2026. (https://doi.org/10.63478/8FLHHK9F)
[BR] "The Weak Principle of Universalization and the Vulnerable: Comments on Minimal Morality," Analysis. 79 (1) 116-128. 2019 (https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/any079)
Work in progress
Free Labor and the Fullness of Self-Realization (under review)
Abstract. Recent discussions of unalienated labor and self-realization have revived debates about what Marxists call the fullness of self-realization: the possibility that a person can attain self-realization in multiple kinds (though by no means all kinds) of laboring activity. The fullness of self-realization captures the radical way that the activity of labor is transformed in a communist mode of production, from a particular type of occupation that is a mere means to making ends meet, to the diverse expression of human potential in a variety of creative activities that can be a source of self-realization for working people. In this paper, I defend the attainability of the fullness of self-realization, engaging with contemporary accounts of unalienated labor that either deny this attainability or restrict the fullness of self-realization to single but complex occupations.
Reconciling Marx's Visions of the Good Life (under review)
Abstract. Most readers of Karl Marx are acquainted with his acute sense that capitalism is inimical to human flourishing. Moral philosophers continue to debate the conception of the good life undergirds this sense. In this paper, I question an underlying claim in this debate, which says that Marx holds at various points in his life two different and incompatible conceptions of the good life. Concerning the site of self-realization in a communist society, one view locates this source in necessary labor (the labor-based view) and the other in creative activity freed from necessity (the leisure-based view). I argue that these views of the good life are better understood as complementary aspects of a holistic view of the good life. Moving from exegesis to critical reconstruction, I then sketch some positive features of this wholistic view. More specifically, I argue that self-realization through unalienated labor can occur in two normatively distinct ways, and this normative distinction tracks a material one: labor that is conditioned by material necessity, and labor that occurs beyond necessity, in the creative activity we undertake beyond having our basic needs met, whatever those basic needs may be.
Species Beings: Reconciling Marxism and Speciesism
Abstract. In Animal Crisis, Alice Crary and Lori Gruen defend and call for a ‘critical animal theory,’ an approach to animal ethics that incorporates eco-feminist and anti-capitalist perspectives alongside their favored approach to ethical analysis of human-animal relationships. This paper aims to contribute to critical animal theory by way of exploring two related debates that receive little attention in Animal Crisis: debates about speciesism (1) in mainstream animal ethics and (2) the contentious reception of speciesism in the Marxist tradition. In the first part of this paper, I canvas the small but growing literature by Marxists on the topic of animal liberation. In the second part of this paper, I argue that a critical animal theory can and should distinguish between speciesism and animal alienation. These concepts can be distinguished insofar as they pick out different types of animal exploitation. These concepts should be distinguished because doing so allows animal ethicists to preserve the notion of speciesism as a moral prejudice while maintaining the idea that there are unique ways in which animal life is degraded in capitalist societies. While one can condemn species alienation without anti-speciesist commitments, I conclude by discussing how species alienation and speciesism are related to one another. I suggest that species alienation can exacerbate speciesism, but also that overcoming species alienation can contribute to the amelioration of speciesism.