Jason Brennan
Biographic Data
| ID | 488635 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jason Brennan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jason |
| FAMILY NAME | Brennan |
| SIGNATURE | BRENNAN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Georgetown University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5636-782X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 65 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 74 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 64 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Hand-Waving the New Democratic Skeptics
Positive Freedom and the Social Meaning of Money
Semiotic objections to markets hold that buying and selling certain things – for example, sex, body parts, votes, surrogacy services – expresses that those things are fungible with money, which has only profane value. This article offers a more fundamental challenge to semiotic critiques of market. We will argue that market exchanges do not have the univocal negative social meaning that friends and foes of markets claim they have. Instead, we arg…
How not to argue for the presumption of liberty
Many liberal philosophers claim that people are free to do as they will by default; any interference must be justified. This supposed presumption of liberty does a significant amount of theoretical work for public reason liberals such as Gerald Gaus and John Rawls. This paper shows that Gaus’s explicit defense of a presumption of liberty fails. Gausa and his many followers repeatedly appeal to a particular thought experiment from Stanley Benn. We…
Public Reason Illiberalism and Ideology
This paper describes public reason communitarianism, a theory which is isomorphic to public reason liberalism. It contains the same internal diversity and debates, and the same fundamental structure and argumentation as public reason liberalism. However, while public reason liberals believe that public reason will converge on liberal outcomes, hypothetical public reason communitarians hold that public reason converges, for largely the same reason…
There Is No Institutional Duty to Vote
Arguments for a duty to vote face the particularity problem—that is, they must show that voting in particular is the only way for citizens to achieve the relevant moral goal (e.g., promote the common good or avoid complicity in injustice), such that the goal cannot be achieved by activities other than voting. Kevin Elliott attempts to overcome the particularity problem by defending a universal duty to vote on the grounds that universal voter turn…
Moderate Conservatism: Reclaiming the Center
Bad Judges: Why Companies Should Not Police Employees’ Extramural Speech
Political Speech for Democratic Realists
This article considers how recent and classic work on political behavior, from the Michigan model and the related democratic realist schools, bear on philosophical issues of political speech. We argue that most ordinary citizens’ political speech should not be taken at face value as an expression of sincere belief. Most of citizens’ political speech is a form a signaling. We argue this research has important philosophical implications that make t…
Liberal Tolerance for an Intolerant Age
In agreement with Bryan Garsten's notion of liberalism as "refuge," liberal societies are distinct in their toleration of badness. They give people the permission and even the right to do wrong. Tolerance, however, does not apply to that to which we are indifferent or to that which we approve of. True tolerance involves the refusal to police bad or defective behaviors, and it therefore makes liberal political movements inherently fragile. Even so…
Diversity for Justice vs. Diversity for Performance: Philosophical and Empirical Tensions
Friendship and Blackballing for Bad Beliefs
Many people believe that we should not be friends with others if they have bad enough moral and political beliefs. For instance, they think that we should not befriend KKK members or Nazis. However, not all errors in moral and political belief disqualify people from friendship. If so, then there is some line to be drawn somewhere which indicates when a person's beliefs are bad enough that we should not befriend them. This paper considers many can…
Democracy: A Guided Tour
ix, 315 pages ; 22 cm
Must Good Samaritans vote
The ‘particularity problem’ is one of the most important objections to the putative duty to vote. The problem holds that the reasons usually given on behalf of a duty to vote fail to show there is a duty specifically to vote, but only at best show that voting is one of the many eligible ways to discharge some underlying duty, such as to exercise civic virtue, to contribute to others’ welfare, to avoid free-riding, or to avoid complicity with inju…
Good Work If You Can Get It: How to Succeed in Academia
Why Paternalists Must Endorse Epistocracy
Recent findings from psychology and behavioral economics suggest that we are “predictably irrational” in the pursuit of our interests. Paternalists from both the social sciences and philosophy use these findings to defend interfering with people's consumption choices for their own good. We should tax soda, ban cigarettes, and mandate retirement savings to make people healthier and wealthier than they’d be on their own. Our thesis is that the stan…
Why Swing‐State Voting Is Not Effective Altruism: The Bad News about the Good News about Voting
Why not anarchism
Recent debates over ideal theory have reinvigorated interest in the question of anarchy. Would a perfectly just society need—or even permit—a state? Ideal anarchists such as Jason Brennan, G.A. Cohen, Christopher Freiman, and Jacob Levy argue that strict compliance with justice obviates the need for a state. Ideal statists such as David Estlund, Gregory Kavka, and John Rawls think that coercive political institutions serve indispensable functions…
Does Public Reason Liberalism Rest on a Mistake? Democracy’s Doxastic and Epistemic Problems
Public reason liberalism is a normative theory meant to adjudicate citizens’ conflicting beliefs about the right and the good. However, it rests upon controversial and likely mistaken empirical claims about voter psychology and voter knowledge. In political science, there are two major paradigms—populism and realism—about the relationship between voters’ beliefs and political outcomes. Realism holds that most citizens lack the kinds of beliefs an…
In defense of epistocracy
Democracies allocate fundamental political power equally. However, democracies incentivize voters to remain ignorant, to indulge epistemic biases, and to vote poorly. Epistocracies retain the main features of liberal, representative governments, but attempt to reduce the dangers of democratic voting by in some way apportioning power according to knowledge. This chapter briefly outlines an epistocratic system called enlightened preference voting, …
If You’re an Egalitarian, You Shouldn’t be so Rich
Moral philosophy's moral risk
Commonsense moral thinking holds that people have doxastic, contemplative, and expressive duties, that is, duties to or not to believe, seriously consider, and express certain ideas. This paper argues that moral and political philosophers face a high risk of violating any such duties, both because of the sensitivity and difficult of the subject matter, and because of various pernicious biases and influences philosophers face. We argue this leads …
Should Employers Pay a Living Wage?
Injustice for All: How Financial Incentives Corrupted and Can Fix the US Criminal Justice System
American criminal justice is a dysfunctional mess. Cops are too violent, the punishments are too punitive, and the so-called Land of the Free imprisons more people than any other country in the world. Understanding why means focusing on color—not only on black or white (which already has been studied extensively), but also on green. The problem is that nearly everyone involved in criminal justice—including district attorneys, elected judges, the …
Imagining and building what could be”: An intergenerational conversation inspired by Allan Luke's scholarship, teaching, and activism
As scholars, teachers, and activists, we write in challenging times. We have been confronted with a rising tide of populist nationalism globally and with increasing income inequality. We are respon
In Our Best Interest: A Defense of Paternalism
A policy is paternalistic if it interferes with someone's freedom for the purpose of promoting that person's own good. For instance, most countries mandate seat belts and criminalize most recreational drugs. Chile requires citizens to save and invest for their retirement. Many countries place high taxes on cigarettes and alcohol, supposedly to reduce consumption, not just to extract revenue. It is puzzling what could justify such paternalistic po…
The Right to a Competent Electorate: The Right to a Competent Electorate
The practice of unrestricted universal suffrage is unjust. Citizens have a right that any political power held over them should be exercised by competent people in a competent way. Universal suffrage violates this right. To satisfy this right, universal suffrage in most cases must be replaced by a moderate epistocracy, in which suffrage is restricted to citizens of sufficient political competence. Epistocracy itself seems to fall foul of the qual…
How Smart is Democracy? You Can't Answer that Question a Priori
Hélène Landemore claims that under certain conditions, democracies with universal suffrage will tend to make smarter and better decisions than epistocracies, even though most citizens in modern democracies are extremely ignorant about politics. However, there is ample empirical evidence that citizens make systematic errors. If so, it is fatal to Landemore's defense of democracy, which, if it works at all, applies only to highly idealized situatio…
Markets without Symbolic Limits
Semiotic objections to commodification hold that buying and selling certain goods and services is wrong because of what market exchange communicates or because it violates the meaning of certain goods, services, and relationships. We argue that such objections fail. The meaning of markets and of money is a contingent, socially constructed fact. Cultures often impute meaning to markets in harmful, socially destructive, or costly ways. Rather than …
Does the Demographic Objection to Epistocracy Succeed
Modesty without Illusion
The common image of the fully virtuous person is of someone with perfect self‐command and self‐perception, who always makes correct evaluations. However, modesty appears to be a real virtue, and it seems contradictory for someone to believe that she is modest. Accordingly, traditional defenders of phronesis (the view that virtue involves practical wisdom) deny that modesty is a virtue, while defenders of modesty such as Julia Driver deny that phr…
Propaganda about Propaganda
Jason Stanley’s How Propaganda Works intends to offer a novel account of what propaganda is, how it works, and what damage it does inside a democratic culture. The book succeeds in showing that, contrary to the stereotype, propaganda need not be false or misleading. However, Stanley offers contradictory definitions of propaganda, and his theory, which is both over- and under-inclusive, is applied in a dismissive, highly ideological way. In the en…
Rawls’ Paradox
Must Good Samaritans vote
The ‘particularity problem’ is one of the most important objections to the putative duty to vote. The problem holds that the reasons usually given on behalf of a duty to vote fail to show there is a duty specifically to vote, but only at best show that voting is one of the many eligible ways to discharge some underlying duty, such as to exercise civic virtue, to contribute to others’ welfare, to avoid free-riding, or to avoid complicity with inju…
Why Swing‐State Voting Is Not Effective Altruism: The Bad News about the Good News about Voting
Why not anarchism
Recent debates over ideal theory have reinvigorated interest in the question of anarchy. Would a perfectly just society need—or even permit—a state? Ideal anarchists such as Jason Brennan, G.A. Cohen, Christopher Freiman, and Jacob Levy argue that strict compliance with justice obviates the need for a state. Ideal statists such as David Estlund, Gregory Kavka, and John Rawls think that coercive political institutions serve indispensable functions…
Libertarianism after Nozick
Robert Nozick'sAnarchy, State, and Utopiamade libertarianism a major theory in political philosophy. However, the book is often misread as making impractical, question-begging arguments on the basis of a libertarian self-ownership principle. This essay explains how academic philosophical libertarianism since Robert Nozick has returned to its humanistic, classical liberal roots. Contemporary libertarians largely work within the PPE (politics, phil…
Equality, Community, and Diversity in Cohen’s Socialist Ideal
The ‘community principle’ is crucial to G. A. Cohen’s argument for socialism, because it is the best independent argument he has adduced for his strongly egalitarian conclusions. Cohen argues that even small differences in wealth ought to be prohibited because they bring us out of community with one another. In this paper, I show that his underlying premises lead to some repugnant conclusions, and thus should be rejected. If Cohen is right that e…
Condorcet's Jury Theorem and the Optimum Number of Voters
Many political theorists and philosophers use Condorcet's Jury Theorem to defend democracy. This article illustrates an uncomfortable implication of Condorcet's Jury Theorem. Realistically, when the conditions of Condorcet's Jury Theorem hold, even in very high stakes elections, having more than 100,000 citizens vote does no significant good in securing good political outcomes. On the Condorcet model, unless voters enjoy voting, or unless they pr…
America Now: Short Readings from Recent Periodicals
America Now has always been characterized by its brief and very current readings that reflect what students are talking and But I read as typically american tv and use of london among american. But a similar age of reagan were trained? Learn to read on preferred stock at winning the plight of federal guidelines. See this offensive he says, stamper in existence. And towns near the missing readers know. And upper middle east hand occasionally adven…
Choice and Excellence: A Defense of Millian Individualism
The Experience of Freedom
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Rawls’ Paradox
Modesty without Illusion
The common image of the fully virtuous person is of someone with perfect self‐command and self‐perception, who always makes correct evaluations. However, modesty appears to be a real virtue, and it seems contradictory for someone to believe that she is modest. Accordingly, traditional defenders of phronesis (the view that virtue involves practical wisdom) deny that modesty is a virtue, while defenders of modesty such as Julia Driver deny that phr…
Tuck on the Rationality of Voting: A Critical Note
This paper argues that Richard Tuck, in his book Free Riding, fails to show it is rational to vote except in unusual cases
Condorcet's Jury Theorem and the Optimum Number of Voters
Many political theorists and philosophers use Condorcet's Jury Theorem to defend democracy. This article illustrates an uncomfortable implication of Condorcet's Jury Theorem. Realistically, when the conditions of Condorcet's Jury Theorem hold, even in very high stakes elections, having more than 100,000 citizens vote does no significant good in securing good political outcomes. On the Condorcet model, unless voters enjoy voting, or unless they pr…
The Right to a Competent Electorate: The Right to a Competent Electorate
The practice of unrestricted universal suffrage is unjust. Citizens have a right that any political power held over them should be exercised by competent people in a competent way. Universal suffrage violates this right. To satisfy this right, universal suffrage in most cases must be replaced by a moderate epistocracy, in which suffrage is restricted to citizens of sufficient political competence. Epistocracy itself seems to fall foul of the qual…
For-Profit Business as Civic Virtue
New essays in political and social philosophy
Political Liberty: Who Needs It?
This paper concerns the question of whether the political liberties tend to be valuable to the people who hold them. (In contrast, we might ask whether the liberties are valuable in the aggregate or are owed to people as a matter of justice, regardless of their value.) Philosophers have argued that the political liberties are needed or at least useful to lead a full, human life, to have one's social status and the social bases of self-respect sec…
Ruth Grant: Strings attached: untangling the ethics of incentives
Political Liberty: Who Needs It?
Contemporary philosophers, including many deliberative democrats, Rawlsian “high liberals,” civic republicans, and civic humanists have recently tended to endorse progressively stronger views about the value of the political liberties—the rights to run for office and vote. They tend to hold that citizens' lives will be stunted, and their status as human beings will be diminished, unless they have equal rights to vote and run for office. It has be…
Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know®
Historically, Americans have seen libertarians as far outside the mainstream, but with the rise of the Tea Party movement, libertarian principles have risen to the forefront of Republican politics. But libertarianism is more than the philosophy of individual freedom and unfettered markets that Republicans have embraced. Indeed, as Jason Brennan points out, libertarianism is a quite different--and far richer--system of thought than most of us susp…
Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know
Compulsory Voting: For and Against
In many democracies, voter turnout is low and getting lower. If the people choose not to govern themselves, should they be forced to do so? For Jason Brennan, compulsory voting is unjust and a petty violation of citizens' liberty. The median non-voter is less informed and rational, as well as more biased, than the median voter. According to Lisa Hill, compulsory voting is a reasonable imposition on personal liberty. Hill points to the discernible…
Epistocracy Within Public Reason
Compulsory Voting: For and Against
Why Not Capitalism
How Smart is Democracy? You Can't Answer that Question a Priori
Hélène Landemore claims that under certain conditions, democracies with universal suffrage will tend to make smarter and better decisions than epistocracies, even though most citizens in modern democracies are extremely ignorant about politics. However, there is ample empirical evidence that citizens make systematic errors. If so, it is fatal to Landemore's defense of democracy, which, if it works at all, applies only to highly idealized situatio…
Equality, Community, and Diversity in Cohen’s Socialist Ideal
The ‘community principle’ is crucial to G. A. Cohen’s argument for socialism, because it is the best independent argument he has adduced for his strongly egalitarian conclusions. Cohen argues that even small differences in wealth ought to be prohibited because they bring us out of community with one another. In this paper, I show that his underlying premises lead to some repugnant conclusions, and thus should be rejected. If Cohen is right that e…
Markets without Symbolic Limits
Semiotic objections to commodification hold that buying and selling certain goods and services is wrong because of what market exchange communicates or because it violates the meaning of certain goods, services, and relationships. We argue that such objections fail. The meaning of markets and of money is a contingent, socially constructed fact. Cultures often impute meaning to markets in harmful, socially destructive, or costly ways. Rather than …
Against Democracy
Claudio López-Guerra, Democracy and Disenfranchisement: The Morality of Electoral Exclusions
Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons
Few political theorists have read Elinor Ostrom’s Governing the Commons or incorporated its insights into their work. At first glance, it may seem to be of interest only to social scientists, with little relevance to purely normative political theory. On the contrary, Ostrom’s work in fact shows a kind of presumptuousness in moral theory. It illustrates that theorists tend to assume rather than prove that the central unit of analysis is the moder…
Law (46 works) · Political science (46 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (36 works) · Sociology (35 works) · Politics (33 works) · Law and economics (31 works) · Philosophy (21 works) · Economics (20 works) · Epistemology (20 works) · Law (16 works)