Fellows 2013

Elizabeth Kahn

Postdoctoral Fellow

Resident at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:

October 2013-August 2014

Research topic at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:

»Idealisation, Imagination and Community as the Primary Agent of Justice«

Project outline:

Many theories of social justice tacitly assume that obligations of justice fall upon a sovereign state government with a monopoly of legitimate violence and sufficient power to freely regulate their society and enact the demands of justice (O'Neill, 2001). In this postdoctoral research project I aim to develop an alternative to this dominant assumption. I will investigate the hypothesis that a community made up of all those who contribute to social structures should be the primary agent of justice, whilst national governments are simply one possible means through which they may be able to bring about justice. In a globalized world where national social structures are in part shaped by external forces this community cannot be limited to one nation or the population of one state. (Elizabeth Kahn)

Funding of the stay:

»Justitia Amplificata. Rethinking Justice − Applied and Global«

Scholarly profile of Elizabeth Kahn

Beth Kahn recieved her Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of York in 2013. Her thesis was titled »Global Poverty and Moral Obligation«.

Main areas of research:

formal logic, moral and political theory, history of political thought, global justice and practical ethics

Selected publications:

»The Tragedy of the Commons as an Essentially Aggregative Harm«, forthcoming in The Journal of Applied Philosophy. Article first published online: 27 FEB 2014.
»Global Justice: A Structural Approach«, in: Public Reason, vol. 4, no. 1-2 (2012), pp. 48-67.
»Review of Gary Browning, Global Theory: from Kant to Hardt and Negri«, in: Studies in Marxism, vol. 13 (2012), pp. 223-226.

Elizabeth Kahn

Scholarly profile of Elizabeth Kahn

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