Copies of my recent publications can be found below. Feel free to contact me for other drafts at [email protected]. I also appreciate comments!
"Rorty's Public-Private Distinction as a Pragmatic Tool" (2018, Contemporary Pragmatism)
"Review of Alexander Douglas, Spinoza and Dutch Cartesianism" (2016, The Philosophical Forum)
"Degrading Our Environment: Western Philosophy and Man's Separation from Nature" (2017, OlioNote)
"Theorizing Common but Differentiated Responsibility for Environmental Harms" (under review)
"Applying a Rawlsian Constructivist Framework to Overcoming Injustice of Environmental Destruction" (under revision)
"The Case of the Privileged Victim: A Defense of Non-Ideal Theory" (under revision)
Title: Environmental Transformative Justice: Responding to Ecocide
Abstract: My dissertation’s central objective is to normatively devise ethically appropriate sociopolitical and juridical responses to ecocide (i.e., grave environmental harm). More specifically, the work seeks to philosophically engage the ethical question of what is owed to human societies that are displaced due to intentional environmental destruction.
Ultimately, my dissertation attempts to remedy these situations by bringing environmental issues under the purview of the discipline of Transitional Justice. The novelty of such an approach is its assertion that ‘social transformation’ rather than merely ‘correcting the harm done’ or ‘restoring the status quo’ is necessary for overcoming these kinds of wrongs because absent social change, the conditions that reinforce, entrench, and reproduce these sorts of injustices remain in place.
Since the focus is on transforming communities’ relationships and interactions with their environment, instead of simply repairing the damage from past injuries, my dissertation offers a full account of what I call environmental transformative justice. To achieve this my dissertation establishes the context in which environmental transformative justice is operative because of harm suffered (i.e., social death and loss of vital interests stemming from intentional environmental destruction) and the manner in which the harm occurred (i.e., direct, indirect, or negligent state action); employs a Rawlsian constructivist theory of justice to determine its ideal aims; offers guidance on how to pursue these aims by exploring the relationship between constructivist and comparative approaches to justice (e.g., Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum); identifies actors' responsibilities for pursuing these aims by developing a notion of common but differentiated responsibility based on Iris Young’s two-tiered model of responsibility, and supports the assertion that environmental transformative justice ought to be pursued from within a Transitional Justice framework, by demonstrating ways in which Transitional Justice mechanisms (e.g., criminal tribunals, truth commissions, public apologies, pardons, lustration, memorialization, reparations, and constitutional conventions) can assist in furthering environmental aims (i.e., promoting ecological sustainability, preservation, and restoration).
"Fundamiddlism: Person-Dependent Metaphysics," The 21st Annual Philosophy Graduate Student Conference in Remembrance of May 4th (2015, Kent State University)
"Rawls, Transitional Justice, and Socioeconomic Inequality," State, Economy, and Inequality Political Science Graduate Conference (2016, University of Pennsylvania)
"Transitional Justice and Socioeconomic Inequality," The 2nd IIF-UNAM Philosophy Graduate Conference (2016, National Autonomous University of Mexico)
"Rawls, Transitional Justice, and Socioeconomic Inequality," 2016 Loyola Philosophy Graduate Conference on Economics, Power, and Human Rights (2016, Loyola University Chicago)
"Man's Separation from Nature and Where to Go from Here,” Strand Bookstore, (2017, New York City)
"Democracy without Truth,” Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) part of The Great Experiment: Questioning Democracy Lecturer Series (2018, New York City)