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Sean Aas

Postdoctoral Fellow

Resident at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:

October 2012 ‒ August 2013

Research topic at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:

»Global Injustice: Theory and Practice«

Project outline:

We do not live in a just world. Many states unjustly abuse their own citizens. Many others unjustly dominate other states. But is the world at large unjust only in the sense that it contains unjust states, unjustly related? I have argued, to the contrary, that the world is unjust for the same, broadly egalitarian, reasons that many existing state-based societies are unjust—because the state system, like many particular states, does not give those who cooperate to constitute it a fair return on their contributions. My project going forward is to deepen and refine the argument for this conclusion; and then, to ask what intellectual and practical commitments follow from it. Because my substantive convictions about global injustice point in this pessimistic direction, I am also deeply interested in methodological questions about the relation between intellectual theory and political practice. In particular, I would like to know whether a theory of justice and injustice has to be capable of telling us as individuals what to do about injustice; or rather (as I suspect) only, of telling us how to feel about our involvement in unjust patterns of collective action that we may or may not be able to do anything about. Answers to these question, I believe, could help to settle ongoing debates about the value of unrealistically utopian political theories; and thus to shed light on whether and how practical political considerations should constrain the intellectual activities of normative political theorists. (Sean Aas)

Funding of the stay:

»Justitia Amplificata. Rethinking Justice − Applied and Global«

Scholarly profile of Sean Aas

Sean Aas received his PhD from Brown University in 2012. The subject of his theisis is »Understanding Global Injustice«.
Update 2016: Currently Jean Aas is a Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Homepage:
Please find more information about Sean Aas here.

Selected publications:

»Disabled – therefore, Unhealthy?«, In: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, (forthcoming 2016).
(with Candice Delmas)»The Ethics of Sexual Reorientation: What should Clinicians and Researchers do?«, In: The Journal of Medical Ethics, 2016.
»Distributing Collective Obligation«, In: Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, Vol. 9, No. 3, 2015.
(with David Wasserman)»Natural and Social Inequality: Disability and Fair Equality of Opportunity«, In: The Journal of Moral Philosophy, 2015.
(with David Wasserman)»Brain-Computer Interfaces: Extending Embodiment, Reducing Stigma?«, In: The Journal of Medical Ethics, 2015.
»Sexual Re-Orientation in Ideal and Non-Ideal Theory«, In: Neuroethics and the Law (ed. Nicole Vincent), Oxford University Press, 2015.

Sean Aas

Scholarly profile of Sean Aas

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