Nicholas Smyth
Biographic Data
| ID | 1308612 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nicholas Smyth |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nicholas |
| FAMILY NAME | Smyth |
| SIGNATURE | SMYTH N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Fordham University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6155-1461 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
There is no such thing as a political conservative
A great deal of ink has been spilled trying to define political conservatism. Yet, far too many of these definitions have failed to isolate a unified and distinctive set of normative commitments that conservatives can be said to share. This has led some critics to allege that the view has no definition. In this paper, I show that there are in fact two perfectly comprehensible conceptions of the theory that meet these criteria. However, I argue th…
A genealogy of emancipatory values
Analytic moral philosophers have generally failed to engage in any substantial way with the cultural history of morality. This is a shame, because a genealogy of morals can help us accomplish two important tasks. First, a genealogy can form the basis of an epistemological project, one that seeks to establish the epistemic status of our beliefs or values. Second, a genealogy can provide us with functional understanding, since a history of our beli…
Purity and Practical Reason
Pragmatic Genealogy involves constructing fictional, quasi-historical models in order to discover what might explain and justify our concepts, ideas or practices. It arguably originated with Hume, but its most prominent practitioners are Edward Craig, Bernard Williams and Mathieu Queloz. Its defenders allege that the method allows us to understand “what the concept does for us, what its role in our life might be” (Craig, 1990), and that this in t…
A moral critique of psychological debunking
Posing questions with a hammer and, perhaps, hearing in reply that famous hollow sound that indicates bloated intestines what a pleasure for me, an old psychologist and pied piper; in my presence, the very things that want to keep quiet are made to speak out.-Nietzsche,"How To Philosophize With a Hammer" I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.-AbrahamMaslow Suppose I am sincerely …
Nothing Personal
Structural Injustice and the Emotions
Moral disagreement and non-moral ignorance
What Is the Question to which Anti-Natalism Is the Answer
Socratic reductionism in ethics
In this paper, I clarify and defend a provocative hypothesis offered by Bernard Williams, namely, that modern people are much more likely to speak in terms of master‐concepts like “good” or “right,” and correspondingly less likely to think and speak in the pluralistic terms favored by certain Ancient societies. By conducting a close reading of the Platonic dialogues Charmides and Laches, I show that the figure of Socrates plays a key historical r…
Moral Knowledge and the Genealogy of Error
There is no such thing as a political conservative
A great deal of ink has been spilled trying to define political conservatism. Yet, far too many of these definitions have failed to isolate a unified and distinctive set of normative commitments that conservatives can be said to share. This has led some critics to allege that the view has no definition. In this paper, I show that there are in fact two perfectly comprehensible conceptions of the theory that meet these criteria. However, I argue th…
Structural Injustice and the Emotions
Moral disagreement and non-moral ignorance
Moral Knowledge and the Genealogy of Error
What Is the Question to which Anti-Natalism Is the Answer
Socratic reductionism in ethics
In this paper, I clarify and defend a provocative hypothesis offered by Bernard Williams, namely, that modern people are much more likely to speak in terms of master‐concepts like “good” or “right,” and correspondingly less likely to think and speak in the pluralistic terms favored by certain Ancient societies. By conducting a close reading of the Platonic dialogues Charmides and Laches, I show that the figure of Socrates plays a key historical r…
Structural Injustice and the Emotions
Moral disagreement and non-moral ignorance
A moral critique of psychological debunking
Posing questions with a hammer and, perhaps, hearing in reply that famous hollow sound that indicates bloated intestines what a pleasure for me, an old psychologist and pied piper; in my presence, the very things that want to keep quiet are made to speak out.-Nietzsche,"How To Philosophize With a Hammer" I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.-AbrahamMaslow Suppose I am sincerely …
Nothing Personal
Purity and Practical Reason
Pragmatic Genealogy involves constructing fictional, quasi-historical models in order to discover what might explain and justify our concepts, ideas or practices. It arguably originated with Hume, but its most prominent practitioners are Edward Craig, Bernard Williams and Mathieu Queloz. Its defenders allege that the method allows us to understand “what the concept does for us, what its role in our life might be” (Craig, 1990), and that this in t…
A genealogy of emancipatory values
Analytic moral philosophers have generally failed to engage in any substantial way with the cultural history of morality. This is a shame, because a genealogy of morals can help us accomplish two important tasks. First, a genealogy can form the basis of an epistemological project, one that seeks to establish the epistemic status of our beliefs or values. Second, a genealogy can provide us with functional understanding, since a history of our beli…
There is no such thing as a political conservative
A great deal of ink has been spilled trying to define political conservatism. Yet, far too many of these definitions have failed to isolate a unified and distinctive set of normative commitments that conservatives can be said to share. This has led some critics to allege that the view has no definition. In this paper, I show that there are in fact two perfectly comprehensible conceptions of the theory that meet these criteria. However, I argue th…
Epistemology (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Law (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · Psychology (4 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (4 works)