Research Interests
My main research interests include ethics, political philosophy, moral psychology, and feminist philosophy. I also have research interests in philosophy of law and social epistemology.
Dissertation
The Contingency of Moral Personhood
Committee: Agnes Callard (chair), Matthias Haase, Sally Haslanger (MIT)
My dissertation challenges traditional conceptions of moral personhood, present in much of the history of philosophy, which contend that it is an inviolable feature of the human condition. In its place, my dissertation argues for a novel account of moral personhood on which having the status as an end in oneself is contingent on the social and political factors of one’s environment. By investigating the moral psychology of living under conditions of oppression, I argue that the distinct interpersonal trauma constituting oppression has the potential to transform full moral beings, ends in themselves, into mere means for the advancement of others’ ends. This moral vulnerability is at the heart of what it is to be human, and our ethical theories must be revised on account of it. Further, I argue that this intervention requires a corresponding revision to accounts of justice in the social contract tradition if the concept of justice is to apply to people as they are (and not as they might be). In practice, this requires us to expand contractarian theories to include political safeguards that facilitate and protect the full expression of moral personhood. Finally, I argue that consideration of the contingency of moral personhood reveals that revenge is a permissible moral motivation under conditions of oppression where the requirements of justice, modified in accordance with my novel account of moral personhood, have not been met. Rejecting those accounts of revenge that view it as both irrational and morally objectionable, I instead develop a view on which the act of revenge is also an act of moral emancipation under conditions of oppression.
Committee: Agnes Callard (chair), Matthias Haase, Sally Haslanger (MIT)
My dissertation challenges traditional conceptions of moral personhood, present in much of the history of philosophy, which contend that it is an inviolable feature of the human condition. In its place, my dissertation argues for a novel account of moral personhood on which having the status as an end in oneself is contingent on the social and political factors of one’s environment. By investigating the moral psychology of living under conditions of oppression, I argue that the distinct interpersonal trauma constituting oppression has the potential to transform full moral beings, ends in themselves, into mere means for the advancement of others’ ends. This moral vulnerability is at the heart of what it is to be human, and our ethical theories must be revised on account of it. Further, I argue that this intervention requires a corresponding revision to accounts of justice in the social contract tradition if the concept of justice is to apply to people as they are (and not as they might be). In practice, this requires us to expand contractarian theories to include political safeguards that facilitate and protect the full expression of moral personhood. Finally, I argue that consideration of the contingency of moral personhood reveals that revenge is a permissible moral motivation under conditions of oppression where the requirements of justice, modified in accordance with my novel account of moral personhood, have not been met. Rejecting those accounts of revenge that view it as both irrational and morally objectionable, I instead develop a view on which the act of revenge is also an act of moral emancipation under conditions of oppression.
Publications
"A Social Location Theory of Gender: How Gender Borders Create the Category 'Woman.'" In The Empire of Disgust: Prejudice, Discrimination and Policy in India and the U.S., Oxford University Press: New Delhi. (August 2018).
Download here.
Download here.
Papers in Progress
"Emancipatory Violence and Revenge" - An analysis of the philosophical treatment of revenge, with particular emphasis on Fanon and de Beauvoir. I provide a novel account of revenge and argue for its emancipatory potential under enduring conditions of injustice.
"Why Does This Humpback Whale Sing? Animal Rationality and the Study of Animal Behavior" – An investigation of animal individuality, anthropomorphism, and the ways in which the biological study of animal behavior ignores central features of cognitively complex species' interior lives. Download here.
"Why Does This Humpback Whale Sing? Animal Rationality and the Study of Animal Behavior" – An investigation of animal individuality, anthropomorphism, and the ways in which the biological study of animal behavior ignores central features of cognitively complex species' interior lives. Download here.