Tom O’shea
Biographic Data
| ID | 4376060 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tom O’shea |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tom |
| FAMILY NAME | O’shea |
| SIGNATURE | O’SHEA T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Roehampton |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4558-878X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 50 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 12 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Radical Feminism and the Politics of Desire
Thinking about desire has been integral to radical feminism. My goal is to revive a critical politics of desire informed by the history of radical feminist thought: one sensitive to social determinants of romantic and sexual attraction and open to the possibility that our desires can be radically transformed outside of oppressive environments. To do this, I reconstruct radical feminist strategies for navigating politically problematic desires, in…
Wage slavery
The idea of wage slavery is often regarded with suspicion even among critics of capitalism. Sceptics note the dubious racial politics associated with its use, while recording many differences between the condition of waged workers and chattel slaves. However, these objections are more plausible on some conceptions of wage slavery than others. I look to the history of political thought to recover and reformulate a more defensible account, drawing …
Eugene Debs and the Socialist Republic
I reconstruct the civic republican foundations of Eugene Debs’s socialist critique of capitalism, demonstrating how he uses a neo-roman conception of freedom to condemn waged labour. Debs is also shown to build upon this neo-roman liberty in his socialist republican objections to the plutocratic capture of the law and threats of violence faced by the labour movement. This Debsian socialist republicanism can be seen to rest on an ambitious underst…
Sexual desire and structural injustice
Is it unjust that some people are less sexually desired than others?We might have sympathy for the sexually undesired but supposing they suffer an outright injustice can seem absurd.My view is that this reaction is too hasty, and that sexually desirability can be a matter of political justice.This is a strong claim, which is likely to invite a torrent of objections, whether for confusing misfortune with injustice, licensing unwarranted political …
Radical Republicanism and the Future of Work
I develop a socialist republican conception of economic liberty and show how it can be used to understand the domination of workers. It holds that both paid and unpaid workers can be deprived of economic freedom when they are exposed to an arbitrary power to undermine their access to the economic capabilities needed for civic equality. On the basis of this analysis, measures intended to reduce domination are recommended, including public ownershi…
What Is Economic Liberty
Economic liberty is best understood in opposition to economic domination. This article develops a radical republican conception of such domination. In particular, I argue that radical republicanism provides a more satisfactory account of individual economic freedom than the market-friendly liberties of working, transacting, holding, and using championed by Nickel and Tomasi. So too, it avoids the pitfalls of other conceptions of economic liberty …
In Defence of Public Ownership
Socialist Republicanism
Socialist republicans advocate public ownership and control of the means of production in order to achieve the republican goal of a society without endemic domination. While civic republicanism is often attacked for its conservatism, the relatively neglected radical history of the tradition shows how a republican form of socialism provides powerful conceptual resources to critique capitalism for leaving workers and citizens dominated. This analys…
Are Workers Dominated
This article undertakes a republican analysis of power in the workplace and labor market in order to determine whether workers are dominated by employers. Civic republicans usually take domination to be subjection to an arbitrary power to interfere with choice. But when faced with labor disputes over what choices it is normal for workers to make for themselves, these accounts of domination struggle to determine whether employers possess the power…
Disability and Domination
The republican ideal of non‐domination identifies the capacity for arbitrary interference as a fundamental threat to liberty that can generate fearful uncertainty and servility in those dominated. I argue that republican accounts of domination can provide a powerful analysis of the nature of legal and institutional power that is encountered by people with mental disorders or cognitive disabilities. In doing so, I demonstrate that non‐domination i…
A Law of One's Own
Radical constructivists appeal to self‐legislation in arguing that rational agents are the ultimate sources of normative authority over themselves. I chart the roots of radical constructivism and argue that its two leading K antian proponents are unable to defend an account of self‐legislation as the fundamental source of practical normativity without this legislation collapsing into a fatal arbitrariness. C hristine K orsgaard cannot adequately …
Hidden substance
Mental capacity and autonomy are often understood to be normatively neutral – the only values or other norms they may presuppose are those the assessed person does or would accept. We show how mental disorder threatens normatively neutral accounts of autonomy. These accounts produce false positives, particularly in the case of disorders (such as depression, anorexia nervosa and schizophrenia) that affect evaluative abilities. Two normatively neut…
Socialist Republicanism
Socialist republicans advocate public ownership and control of the means of production in order to achieve the republican goal of a society without endemic domination. While civic republicanism is often attacked for its conservatism, the relatively neglected radical history of the tradition shows how a republican form of socialism provides powerful conceptual resources to critique capitalism for leaving workers and citizens dominated. This analys…
Eugene Debs and the Socialist Republic
I reconstruct the civic republican foundations of Eugene Debs’s socialist critique of capitalism, demonstrating how he uses a neo-roman conception of freedom to condemn waged labour. Debs is also shown to build upon this neo-roman liberty in his socialist republican objections to the plutocratic capture of the law and threats of violence faced by the labour movement. This Debsian socialist republicanism can be seen to rest on an ambitious underst…
In Defence of Public Ownership
Wage slavery
The idea of wage slavery is often regarded with suspicion even among critics of capitalism. Sceptics note the dubious racial politics associated with its use, while recording many differences between the condition of waged workers and chattel slaves. However, these objections are more plausible on some conceptions of wage slavery than others. I look to the history of political thought to recover and reformulate a more defensible account, drawing …
Hidden substance
Mental capacity and autonomy are often understood to be normatively neutral – the only values or other norms they may presuppose are those the assessed person does or would accept. We show how mental disorder threatens normatively neutral accounts of autonomy. These accounts produce false positives, particularly in the case of disorders (such as depression, anorexia nervosa and schizophrenia) that affect evaluative abilities. Two normatively neut…
A Law of One's Own
Radical constructivists appeal to self‐legislation in arguing that rational agents are the ultimate sources of normative authority over themselves. I chart the roots of radical constructivism and argue that its two leading K antian proponents are unable to defend an account of self‐legislation as the fundamental source of practical normativity without this legislation collapsing into a fatal arbitrariness. C hristine K orsgaard cannot adequately …
Disability and Domination
The republican ideal of non‐domination identifies the capacity for arbitrary interference as a fundamental threat to liberty that can generate fearful uncertainty and servility in those dominated. I argue that republican accounts of domination can provide a powerful analysis of the nature of legal and institutional power that is encountered by people with mental disorders or cognitive disabilities. In doing so, I demonstrate that non‐domination i…
Are Workers Dominated
This article undertakes a republican analysis of power in the workplace and labor market in order to determine whether workers are dominated by employers. Civic republicans usually take domination to be subjection to an arbitrary power to interfere with choice. But when faced with labor disputes over what choices it is normal for workers to make for themselves, these accounts of domination struggle to determine whether employers possess the power…
What Is Economic Liberty
Economic liberty is best understood in opposition to economic domination. This article develops a radical republican conception of such domination. In particular, I argue that radical republicanism provides a more satisfactory account of individual economic freedom than the market-friendly liberties of working, transacting, holding, and using championed by Nickel and Tomasi. So too, it avoids the pitfalls of other conceptions of economic liberty …
In Defence of Public Ownership
Socialist Republicanism
Socialist republicans advocate public ownership and control of the means of production in order to achieve the republican goal of a society without endemic domination. While civic republicanism is often attacked for its conservatism, the relatively neglected radical history of the tradition shows how a republican form of socialism provides powerful conceptual resources to critique capitalism for leaving workers and citizens dominated. This analys…
Sexual desire and structural injustice
Is it unjust that some people are less sexually desired than others?We might have sympathy for the sexually undesired but supposing they suffer an outright injustice can seem absurd.My view is that this reaction is too hasty, and that sexually desirability can be a matter of political justice.This is a strong claim, which is likely to invite a torrent of objections, whether for confusing misfortune with injustice, licensing unwarranted political …
Radical Republicanism and the Future of Work
I develop a socialist republican conception of economic liberty and show how it can be used to understand the domination of workers. It holds that both paid and unpaid workers can be deprived of economic freedom when they are exposed to an arbitrary power to undermine their access to the economic capabilities needed for civic equality. On the basis of this analysis, measures intended to reduce domination are recommended, including public ownershi…
Eugene Debs and the Socialist Republic
I reconstruct the civic republican foundations of Eugene Debs’s socialist critique of capitalism, demonstrating how he uses a neo-roman conception of freedom to condemn waged labour. Debs is also shown to build upon this neo-roman liberty in his socialist republican objections to the plutocratic capture of the law and threats of violence faced by the labour movement. This Debsian socialist republicanism can be seen to rest on an ambitious underst…
Wage slavery
The idea of wage slavery is often regarded with suspicion even among critics of capitalism. Sceptics note the dubious racial politics associated with its use, while recording many differences between the condition of waged workers and chattel slaves. However, these objections are more plausible on some conceptions of wage slavery than others. I look to the history of political thought to recover and reformulate a more defensible account, drawing …
Radical Feminism and the Politics of Desire
Thinking about desire has been integral to radical feminism. My goal is to revive a critical politics of desire informed by the history of radical feminist thought: one sensitive to social determinants of romantic and sexual attraction and open to the possibility that our desires can be radically transformed outside of oppressive environments. To do this, I reconstruct radical feminist strategies for navigating politically problematic desires, in…
Political science (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Politics (8 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (6 works) · Economics (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Law and economics (5 works) · Democracy (4 works) · Political Economy and Marxism (4 works)