Documents are in PDF format.

 

Published Papers

• “The Limits of a Pluralist Commonwealth” The Good Society (forthcoming).

   

• “The Ethical Dimension of the Class Society” Social Theory and Practice vol. 33, no. 2 (April 2007)

   

• “Democratic Capitalism and Respect for the Value of Freedom” International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics vol 2, no 3/4 (2006) [Abstract]

   

• Book note for Charles Lindblom, The Market System, Business Ethics Quarterly vol. 16, no. 3 (July 2006).

   

• “A Philosophical Critique of Fazlur Rahman’s Islam and Modernity” Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 6 (2000-1).

   

• “Interpreting the Tradition: The Modernist Argument and the Sources of Islam” American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 18/1 (Winter 2001)

   

Working Papers

• Corporations and Consequentialism
  Consequentialist theories of the corporation contend that corporations and their managers have a duty to act in certain ways because acting in these ways will lead to the best consequences. My aim in this paper is to motivate a nonconsequentialist approach to the duties of corporations and their managers by demonstrating that consequentialist theories suffer from several fundamental weaknesses. Among the most important is that these theories fail to recognize that the corporation belongs to a sphere of life that is shielded from the demands of aggregate welfare—what I call the “sphere of partiality.” Throughout my discussion, I focus on two of the most important consequentialist theories of the corporation today, namely the theory advocated by Michael Jensen and the theory advocated by Frank Easterbrook and Daniel Fischel.

   

• An Alternative to the Fiduciary Theory of the Firm
  According to the dominant view of corporations today, managers have an obligation to maximize returns for shareholders because they act as the agents of shareholders when they manage the firm's assets. I argue that this view fails completely to acknowledge an essential aspect of corporations, which is their impersonal character. I go on to explore the possibility of formulating a better understanding of managerial responsibilities based on an analogy between capital markets and consumer markets. If consumers have a right to expect that the products they buy are safe, then perhaps investors have a similar right to expect that their investments are profit-oriented. In both cases, the rights in question place corresponding duties on managers. The end result would be a greatly deflated view of the requirement that managers increase returns for shareholders.

   

• Autonomy, Frankfurt and the Nature of Reflective Endorsement
  An attractive conception of autonomy must provide us with a compelling account of what distinguishes desires that are expressive of our agency from those that are merely elements in our motivational system. In this paper, I argue for a view that says that a desire is expressive of our agency when we reflect on the goal that is the object of the desire, and conclude that this goal fits into the broader lifeplan that we have most reason to pursue. This position is broadly rationalist in that it emphasizes the importance of our judgments, and contrasts with non-rationalist views that emphasize the importance of our decisions or coherence among our desires. I support my view by showing how it provides us with a better understanding of the nature of reflection than the position advanced by Harry Frankfurt, which I take to be the most attractive non-rationalist position in the literature. I conclude by defending my rationalist view against a well-known criticism, namely that rationalist theories are inconsistent with the fact that we sometimes accept defects in our character as genuine features of who we are.