Helga Varden
Biographic Data
| ID | 1402189 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Helga Varden |
| GIVEN NAMES | Helga |
| FAMILY NAME | Varden |
| SIGNATURE | VARDEN H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
| ORCID | 0009-0003-2362-1934 |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Kant and Sexual Fantasy
Building on Kant’s idea of the ‘free play of the imagination’, we argue that sexual fantasy reveals both deep insights into our desires and emotional wounds as well as the impact of oppressive conditions on our sexual selves. After clarifying Kant’s distinctions between experience, dreams, and fantasy, insofar as they are important to defining the unique character of sexual fantasy, and incorporating feminist theories into our reading of Kant and…
Leaving the State of Nature. Strengths and Limits of Kant’s Transformation of the Social Contract Tradition (online first)
I first outline how Kant’s ideal account of rightful external freedom transforms the social contract tradition as found in the works of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, before proposing a way to see Kant’s two-layered non-ideal theory as complementing his ideal theory of rightful freedom. This enables us to envision a conception of rightful external freedom and of rightful human freedom in particular societies. These arguments also show us the import…
Leaving the State of Nature. Strengths and Limits of Kant’s Transformation of the Social Contract Tradition
I first outline how Kant’s ideal account of rightful external freedom transforms the social contract tradition as found in the works of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, before proposing a way to see Kant’s two-layered non-ideal theory as complementing his ideal theory of rightful freedom. This enables us to envision a conception of rightful external freedom and of rightful human freedom in particular societies. These arguments also show us the import…
Jordan Pascoe’s Kant’s Theory of Labour
This article critiques Jordan Pascoe’s Kant’s Theory of Labour (CUP 2022). After outlining some of its many distinctive contributions, I consider Pascoe’s ideas on women, marriage, method, and the challenges involved in engaging with (classical) texts that express various ‘isms’. In addition to giving readers an introduction to many of the exciting ideas presented in the book, my aim is to stimulate further discussion of the kind all excellent bo…
Asha Bhandary's Freedom to Care — A Kantian Care Engagement
This review locates Asha Bhandary's Freedom to Care in the history of philosophy, notes some of the theory's distinctive features that clearly advance the care theory tradition, and raises some puzzles and questions regarding specific elements of the theory. My remarks focus mostly on Part I of the book and on the following four topics: (1) Bhandary's Rawlsian roots, (2) Bhandary's engagement with Eva Feder Kittay, (3) Bhandary's choice of J. S. …
The Moral Habitat
Those who love philosophy books that present new, exciting, and complex theories have been given a gift in Barbara Herman’s The Moral Habitat. In my view, it is also a gift to Kant, since it develops a deeply Kantian account of deliberation as part of showing how perfect and imperfect duties can be seen as working together in a dynamic moral (eco)system of duties of right and of virtue. In the process of doing this, Herman develops a new, intrigu…
A Kantian Account of Trauma
In our societies today, the prevalence of serious, untreated trauma means that we cannot reliably expect to receive or give unconditional love, understood as love which functions within a normative framework to protect each and all of us as having dignity. Serious, untreated trauma makes unconditional love (so understood) unreliable because each time the pattern of the psychological damage (trauma) is triggered in the traumatized person, in the w…
Towards a Kantian theory of philosophical education and wisdom
Kant's life shows us that it is possible to be a philosopher who revolutionises our thinking about morality in terms of freedom—in fact, to be the first to propose that treating others morally is to treat them with respect or as having dignity—while simultaneously dehumanising himself and others. It presumably follows from this that we can teach our students Kant's brilliant theories of morality as freedom without, thereby, giving them access to …
Sex, Love, and Gender
This book provides a comprehensive account of sex, love, and gender—the first of its kind—by engaging a seemingly unlikely ally: Immanuel Kant. To date, no scholar has considered Kant’s potential contributions to such an account; nor is this surprising. Kant explicitly views sexual activity as inherently morally problematic, maintaining as ethically permissible only heterosexual procreative sexual activity within the confines of legal marriage. K…
Rawls Vs. Nozick Vs. Kant on Domestic Economic Justice
Self-Governance and Reform in Kant's Liberal Republicanism - Ideal and Non-Ideal Theory in Kant's Doctrine of Right
At the heart of Kant’s legal-political philosophy lies a liberal, republican ideal of justice understood in terms of private independence (non-domination) and subjection to public laws securing freedom for all citizens as equals. Given this basic commitment of Kant’s, it is puzzling to many that he does not consider democracy a minimal condition on a legitimate state. In addition, many find Kant ideas of reform or improvement of the historical st…
Immanuel Kant – Justice as Freedom
Kant and Women
Kant's conception of women is complex. Although he struggles to bring his considered view of women into focus, a sympathetic reading shows it not to be anti‐feminist and to contain important arguments regarding human nature. Kant believes the traditional male‐female distinction is unlikely to disappear, but he never proposes the traditional gender ideal as the moral ideal; he rejects the idea that such considerations of philosophical anthropology…
The Lockean ‘Enough-and-as-Good’ Proviso
A private property account is central to a liberal theory of justice. Much of the appeal of the Lockean theory stems from its account of the so-called ‘enough-and-as-good’ proviso, a principle which aims to specify each employable person’s fair share of the earth’s material resources. I argue that to date Lockeans have failed to show how the proviso can be applied without thereby undermining a guiding intuition in Lockean theory. This guiding int…
A Kantian Critique of the Care Tradition
Liberal theories of justice have been rightly criticized for two things by care theorists. First, they have failed to deal with private care relations’ inherent (inter)dependency, asymmetry and particularity. Second, they have been shown unable properly to address the asymmetry and dependency constitutive of care workers’ and care-receivers’ systemic conditions. I apply Kant’s theory of right to show that current care theories unfortunately repro…
A Kantian conception of global justice
I start this article by addressing Kant's question why rightful interactions require both domestic public authorities (or states) and a global public authority? Of central importance are two issues: first, the identification of problems insoluble without public authorities, and second, why a domestic public monopoly on coercion can be rightfully established and maintained by coercive means while a global public monopoly on coercion cannot be esta…
Kant's Non-Absolutist Conception of Political Legitimacy – How Public Right ‘Concludes’ Private Right in the “Doctrine of Right”
Contrary to the received view, I argue that Kant, in the “Doctrine of Right”, outlines a third, republican alternative to absolutist and voluntarist conceptions of political legitimacy. According to this republican alternative, a state must meet certain institutional requirements before political obligations arise. An important result of this interpretation is not only that there are institutional restraints on a legitimate state's use of coercio…
Lockean Freedom and the Proviso’s Appeal to Scientific Knowledge
I argue in this paper that Locke and contemporary Lockeans underestimate the problems involved in their frequent, implicit assumption that when we apply the proviso we use the latest scientific knowledge of natural resources, technology, and the economy’s operations. Problematic for these theories is that much of the pertinent knowledge used is obtained through particular persons’ labor. If the knowledge obtained through individuals’ labor must b…
Diversity and Unity
This paper argues with Kant that the only justifiable basis for a legal system is an innate right to freedom, which is defined as the right to be subject only to universal law and not to the arbitrary choices of others. Since rightful interaction is possible only within public institutional frameworks, we cannot respect one another’s innate right to freedom simply by interacting as virtuous individuals or as just states. In fact, only public auth…
Kant's Non-Voluntarist Conception of Political Obligations
In this paper, I present and defend Kant's non-voluntarist conception of political obligations. I argue that civil society is not primarily a prudential requirement for justice; it is not merely a necessary evil or a moral response to combat our corrupting nature or our tendency to act viciously, thoughtlessly or in a biased manner. Rather, civil society is constitutive of rightful relations among persons because only in civil society can we inte…
A Kantian Conception of Rightful Sexual Relations
Kant and Dependency Relations
Contrary to much Kant interpretation, this article argues that Kant's moral philosophy, including his account of charity, is irrelevant to justifying the state's right to redistribute material resources to secure the rights of dependents (the poor, children, and the impaired). The article also rejects the popular view that Kant either does not or cannot justify anything remotely similar to the liberal welfare state. A closer look at Kant's accoun…
Kant and Women
Kant's conception of women is complex. Although he struggles to bring his considered view of women into focus, a sympathetic reading shows it not to be anti‐feminist and to contain important arguments regarding human nature. Kant believes the traditional male‐female distinction is unlikely to disappear, but he never proposes the traditional gender ideal as the moral ideal; he rejects the idea that such considerations of philosophical anthropology…
A Kantian conception of global justice
I start this article by addressing Kant's question why rightful interactions require both domestic public authorities (or states) and a global public authority? Of central importance are two issues: first, the identification of problems insoluble without public authorities, and second, why a domestic public monopoly on coercion can be rightfully established and maintained by coercive means while a global public monopoly on coercion cannot be esta…
Kant and Dependency Relations
Contrary to much Kant interpretation, this article argues that Kant's moral philosophy, including his account of charity, is irrelevant to justifying the state's right to redistribute material resources to secure the rights of dependents (the poor, children, and the impaired). The article also rejects the popular view that Kant either does not or cannot justify anything remotely similar to the liberal welfare state. A closer look at Kant's accoun…
A Kantian Conception of Rightful Sexual Relations
Kant and Dependency Relations
Contrary to much Kant interpretation, this article argues that Kant's moral philosophy, including his account of charity, is irrelevant to justifying the state's right to redistribute material resources to secure the rights of dependents (the poor, children, and the impaired). The article also rejects the popular view that Kant either does not or cannot justify anything remotely similar to the liberal welfare state. A closer look at Kant's accoun…
Diversity and Unity
This paper argues with Kant that the only justifiable basis for a legal system is an innate right to freedom, which is defined as the right to be subject only to universal law and not to the arbitrary choices of others. Since rightful interaction is possible only within public institutional frameworks, we cannot respect one another’s innate right to freedom simply by interacting as virtuous individuals or as just states. In fact, only public auth…
Kant's Non-Voluntarist Conception of Political Obligations
In this paper, I present and defend Kant's non-voluntarist conception of political obligations. I argue that civil society is not primarily a prudential requirement for justice; it is not merely a necessary evil or a moral response to combat our corrupting nature or our tendency to act viciously, thoughtlessly or in a biased manner. Rather, civil society is constitutive of rightful relations among persons because only in civil society can we inte…
Kant's Non-Absolutist Conception of Political Legitimacy – How Public Right ‘Concludes’ Private Right in the “Doctrine of Right”
Contrary to the received view, I argue that Kant, in the “Doctrine of Right”, outlines a third, republican alternative to absolutist and voluntarist conceptions of political legitimacy. According to this republican alternative, a state must meet certain institutional requirements before political obligations arise. An important result of this interpretation is not only that there are institutional restraints on a legitimate state's use of coercio…
Lockean Freedom and the Proviso’s Appeal to Scientific Knowledge
I argue in this paper that Locke and contemporary Lockeans underestimate the problems involved in their frequent, implicit assumption that when we apply the proviso we use the latest scientific knowledge of natural resources, technology, and the economy’s operations. Problematic for these theories is that much of the pertinent knowledge used is obtained through particular persons’ labor. If the knowledge obtained through individuals’ labor must b…
A Kantian conception of global justice
I start this article by addressing Kant's question why rightful interactions require both domestic public authorities (or states) and a global public authority? Of central importance are two issues: first, the identification of problems insoluble without public authorities, and second, why a domestic public monopoly on coercion can be rightfully established and maintained by coercive means while a global public monopoly on coercion cannot be esta…
The Lockean ‘Enough-and-as-Good’ Proviso
A private property account is central to a liberal theory of justice. Much of the appeal of the Lockean theory stems from its account of the so-called ‘enough-and-as-good’ proviso, a principle which aims to specify each employable person’s fair share of the earth’s material resources. I argue that to date Lockeans have failed to show how the proviso can be applied without thereby undermining a guiding intuition in Lockean theory. This guiding int…
A Kantian Critique of the Care Tradition
Liberal theories of justice have been rightly criticized for two things by care theorists. First, they have failed to deal with private care relations’ inherent (inter)dependency, asymmetry and particularity. Second, they have been shown unable properly to address the asymmetry and dependency constitutive of care workers’ and care-receivers’ systemic conditions. I apply Kant’s theory of right to show that current care theories unfortunately repro…
Immanuel Kant – Justice as Freedom
Kant and Women
Kant's conception of women is complex. Although he struggles to bring his considered view of women into focus, a sympathetic reading shows it not to be anti‐feminist and to contain important arguments regarding human nature. Kant believes the traditional male‐female distinction is unlikely to disappear, but he never proposes the traditional gender ideal as the moral ideal; he rejects the idea that such considerations of philosophical anthropology…
Rawls Vs. Nozick Vs. Kant on Domestic Economic Justice
Self-Governance and Reform in Kant's Liberal Republicanism - Ideal and Non-Ideal Theory in Kant's Doctrine of Right
At the heart of Kant’s legal-political philosophy lies a liberal, republican ideal of justice understood in terms of private independence (non-domination) and subjection to public laws securing freedom for all citizens as equals. Given this basic commitment of Kant’s, it is puzzling to many that he does not consider democracy a minimal condition on a legitimate state. In addition, many find Kant ideas of reform or improvement of the historical st…
Sex, Love, and Gender
This book provides a comprehensive account of sex, love, and gender—the first of its kind—by engaging a seemingly unlikely ally: Immanuel Kant. To date, no scholar has considered Kant’s potential contributions to such an account; nor is this surprising. Kant explicitly views sexual activity as inherently morally problematic, maintaining as ethically permissible only heterosexual procreative sexual activity within the confines of legal marriage. K…
Towards a Kantian theory of philosophical education and wisdom
Kant's life shows us that it is possible to be a philosopher who revolutionises our thinking about morality in terms of freedom—in fact, to be the first to propose that treating others morally is to treat them with respect or as having dignity—while simultaneously dehumanising himself and others. It presumably follows from this that we can teach our students Kant's brilliant theories of morality as freedom without, thereby, giving them access to …
A Kantian Account of Trauma
In our societies today, the prevalence of serious, untreated trauma means that we cannot reliably expect to receive or give unconditional love, understood as love which functions within a normative framework to protect each and all of us as having dignity. Serious, untreated trauma makes unconditional love (so understood) unreliable because each time the pattern of the psychological damage (trauma) is triggered in the traumatized person, in the w…
Asha Bhandary's Freedom to Care — A Kantian Care Engagement
This review locates Asha Bhandary's Freedom to Care in the history of philosophy, notes some of the theory's distinctive features that clearly advance the care theory tradition, and raises some puzzles and questions regarding specific elements of the theory. My remarks focus mostly on Part I of the book and on the following four topics: (1) Bhandary's Rawlsian roots, (2) Bhandary's engagement with Eva Feder Kittay, (3) Bhandary's choice of J. S. …
The Moral Habitat
Those who love philosophy books that present new, exciting, and complex theories have been given a gift in Barbara Herman’s The Moral Habitat. In my view, it is also a gift to Kant, since it develops a deeply Kantian account of deliberation as part of showing how perfect and imperfect duties can be seen as working together in a dynamic moral (eco)system of duties of right and of virtue. In the process of doing this, Herman develops a new, intrigu…
Leaving the State of Nature. Strengths and Limits of Kant’s Transformation of the Social Contract Tradition (online first)
I first outline how Kant’s ideal account of rightful external freedom transforms the social contract tradition as found in the works of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, before proposing a way to see Kant’s two-layered non-ideal theory as complementing his ideal theory of rightful freedom. This enables us to envision a conception of rightful external freedom and of rightful human freedom in particular societies. These arguments also show us the import…
Leaving the State of Nature. Strengths and Limits of Kant’s Transformation of the Social Contract Tradition
I first outline how Kant’s ideal account of rightful external freedom transforms the social contract tradition as found in the works of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, before proposing a way to see Kant’s two-layered non-ideal theory as complementing his ideal theory of rightful freedom. This enables us to envision a conception of rightful external freedom and of rightful human freedom in particular societies. These arguments also show us the import…
Jordan Pascoe’s Kant’s Theory of Labour
This article critiques Jordan Pascoe’s Kant’s Theory of Labour (CUP 2022). After outlining some of its many distinctive contributions, I consider Pascoe’s ideas on women, marriage, method, and the challenges involved in engaging with (classical) texts that express various ‘isms’. In addition to giving readers an introduction to many of the exciting ideas presented in the book, my aim is to stimulate further discussion of the kind all excellent bo…
Kant and Sexual Fantasy
Building on Kant’s idea of the ‘free play of the imagination’, we argue that sexual fantasy reveals both deep insights into our desires and emotional wounds as well as the impact of oppressive conditions on our sexual selves. After clarifying Kant’s distinctions between experience, dreams, and fantasy, insofar as they are important to defining the unique character of sexual fantasy, and incorporating feminist theories into our reading of Kant and…
Sociology (19 works) · Epistemology (18 works) · Philosophy (17 works) · Law (15 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (15 works) · Political science (15 works) · Law and economics (13 works) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (13 works) · Politics (8 works) · Economic Justice (7 works)