Recently completed PhDs
Below is a list of recent past PhD and M Phil students with a brief description of their particular project.
David Rhys Birks
Supervisors Kimberley Brownlee and Hillel Steiner
E-mail address: David.Birks@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
Passed viva September 2011
My thesis addresses the question, when is it morally required to administer involuntary medical treatment? According to most contemporary liberal philosophers, if a person is fully informed and procedurally rational, it is always morally wrong to interfere with his self-regarding choices. Therefore, if a person chooses not to have medical treatment under these ideal conditions, it would always be wrong to administer treatment. This thesis refutes this view. It argues that there are a number of cases in which we are morally required to administer medical treatment, even if the person chooses, under these ideal conditions, not to have medical treatment. The thesis tackles this issue by analyzing the nature of wellbeing and practical reason, the value of autonomy, and the wrongness of paternalism.
My wider research interests include issues in political philosophy, bioethics and normative ethics.
Dogancan Ozsel
Supervisors Alan Hamlin and Hillel Steiner
E-mail address: dogancan_ozsel@yahoo.com
Passed viva June 2011
Radicalism and Conservative Ideology My thesis will endeavour to put forward a critical analysis of conservative ideology, via demonstrating the inseparable link between radical conservatism and ‘traditional’ forms of conservatism. In its broadest sense, the thesis will be an investigation of the interpretive possibilities inherent to conservative ideology. To carry out that investigation; I am planning to reconstruct conservatism as an ‘ideology’, illuminate its characteristic references, show the consistency of ‘radical’ policies with these characteristics; and lastly, reconsider possible conservative variations which should be deduced from that referential body.
Rebecca Reilly-Cooper
Supervisors Steve de Wijze and Jon Quong
E-Mail Address: Rebecca.Reilly-cooper@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
Passed viva December 2010
My doctoral thesis examines the role played by emotion and sentiment in public reason and the justification of political principles. Contemporary liberal theories of public justification typically fail to recognise the significance of emotions for securing citizens' assent to the validity of just principles. This thesis aims to rectify this neglect by examining the importance of emotions for public justification, and argues that all such deliberation will necessarily make use of feeling and emotion in addition to pure reason or cognition. Further, it aims to demonstrate that incorporating emotion into our accounts of public justification does not entail a rejection of impartiality. It argues that liberal political philosophers must recognise that affective states such as emotion and sentiment will always and necessarily be present in public reasoning, and so rather than regarding them as detrimental to public justification and seeking to excise them from the political domain, what is needed is a theoretical account of their legitimate and valuable uses, and of when their influence would be illegitimate.
Qin Cao
Supervisors Jon Quong and Adrian Blau and Hillel Steiner
E-mail address: Qin.Cao-2@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
Passed Viva August 2010
My thesis is about the concept of freedom (liberty) in contemporary republicanism, and I will especially pay attention to the works of Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit. These writers challenge the traditional dichotomy of positive / negative freedom. Based on philosophical resources in past eras (like Renaissance, English Civil War and Enlightenment), they claim that there was a tradition of republican political philosophy, which had a different idea of freedom from the one associated with modern liberalism. They try to rediscover this tradition and the implications of the alternative concept of freedom (which Pettit calls "freedom as non-domination", in contrast with the liberal concept of "freedom as non-interference). The aim of my thesis is to evaluate their arguments, from both philosophical and historical perspectives, and to judge whether they provide a better theory of freedom and government than the liberal one. Qin
Richard Child
Supervisor Jon Quong
E-mail address: richard.child@manchester.ac.uk
Taking cosmopolitanism seriously: to what extent can national partialities and allegiances coexist with a global conception of individual equality?
Passed Viva September 2010
The ethical perspective known as ‘cosmopolitanism’ claims that all individuals in the world are moral equals and that nothing related to their ethnicity, cultural background or geographical location should influence their chances in life. In its strong normative form, cosmopolitanism sees national borders as morally arbitrary. The question my work seeks to answer is how far we can and should try to take this cosmopolitan view towards its logical conclusion. More specifically, I aim to determine the implications taking cosmopolitanism seriously has for the partiality many people feel towards their co-nationals. I intend to argue that, although nationhood has in many cases been hard won, the evolution of political society will not, and should not, stop there. Nation-states are simply unable to provide the moral and institutional preconditions for cosmopolitan justice and, therefore, should be replaced by forms of government more suited to this task.
Christopher Hughes
Supervisors Alan Hamlin and Angelia Wilson
E-Mail address: christopher.hughes-2@manchester.ac.uk
Does Liberal Democracy Represent the End of History? An analysis of Fukuyama and Postmodern Challenges
Passed Viva May 2010
My thesis is a theoretical examination of the possibility of a challenge to liberal democracy and Fukuyama’s claim that it is the end of history. My thesis questions whether it is possible to conceive of a future which is not a liberal democracy in the most “enlightened”, developed and post-industrial nations. The thesis asks does liberal democracy represent the end of history, or is it possible to imagine a philosophical alternative to liberal democracy? In particular, the thesis examines whether postmodernism represents a coherent challenge to liberal democracy by assessing the arguments from a range of postmodern critiques of liberal democracy, from various thinkers, including: Foucault, Derrida, Butler, Lyotard and Rorty. The thesis primarily focuses on three questions and three problems which postmodern theory raises to the possibility of constructing a notion of a history which has end point. The thesis poses the questions: can we talk about a universal and teleological history? Can we talk about a universal human nature? Can we talk about an autonomous individual? Ultimately, the thesis aims to assess whether the political objectives of liberal modernists such as Fukuyama and their postmodern critics are as opposed as they appear. The thesis attempts to establish a dialogue and conversations between the two positions, by highlighting points of convergence, and thus, at least partially, reconciling the two schools of thought. The thesis concludes by offering a political vision based on the emancipation of individual difference which synthesises liberal democratic and poststructural thought.
Tom Goodwin
Supervisors Steve de Wijze and Kimberley Brownlee
E-mail address: Tom.Goodwin@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
Dirty Hands: Inescapable Wrongdoing in Public and Private Life?
Passed Viva October 2009
The aim of my thesis is to highlight the failure of traditional moral theory to capture a pervasive aspect of our moral reality, namely the problem of 'dirty hands' - a species of unavoidable moral wrongdoing. It will argued that the phenomenon of 'dirty hands' also has particular implications for the political sphere, especially when viewed through the lens of a democratic society.
Charlie Robinson
Supervisors Steve de Wijze and Thomas Uebel (Philosophy)
Deliberative Democracy and Social Justice
Passed Viva - October 2007
I propose to develop an account of deliberative democracy that draws on the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Habermasian versions of deliberative democracy ignore the fact that moral commitments are rooted in specific traditions and norms and thus cannot be the subject of practical or moral discourses aiming at consensus through rational argumentation. Gadamer points us in the right direction by showing that tradition and prejudice are ontologically fundamental and cannot be side- stepped. In fact, they are the very conditions of the possibility of knowledge. But this does not mean that we draw, as Walzer proposes, only on the resources embedded in the democratic political culture, even though hermeneutics seems to lead us to suppose the validity of such a project. In multicultural and pluralistic societies, we cannot hope to specify the content of tradition in a way acceptable to all, as different groups will interpret the same phenomenon differently, even if they are all reasonable (say, in the Rawlsian sense of the term). Thus, deliberative procedures, if they are sufficiently inclusive and open-ended (i.e. if we accept their limitations in line with hermeneutic insights), will enable citizens to test their different interpretations in a practical way. Hermeneutic discourses proceed in a way analogous to interpretation itself, as described by the hermeneutic circle. Our interpretations of aspects of a form of life are to be evaluated in terms of a background of intersubjectively valid norms and behavioural expectations. But by the same token, aspects of those background conditions are subject to revision in the light of our interpretations of individual traditions, practices, norms, and so on.
Mihaela Georgieva
Supervisors Steve de Wijze and Hillel Steiner
E-mail address: M.V.Georgieva@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
Political Constructivism and the Liberal Project of Public Justification
Passed Viva - August 2007
The thesis examines one of the important challenges faced by contemporary projects of liberal theorising – the challenge of offering public justification for liberal principles of justice to an ethically diverse constituency of justification marked by reasonable disagreement. My aim is to consider the political liberal argument (as exemplified by the work of Rawls) for the 'methodological and logical independence' of political theory from moral philosophy and to assess its implications for the project of liberal justification of principles of justice. To do that, I, firstly, analyse how the 'argument for agnosticism' leads to the adoption of a specific approach to justice – political constructivism. Secondly, I try to show that there is a tension between the commitment to agnosticism and the commitment to provide a compelling justification. Finally, I consider some possible ways of resolving that tension and its implications for both the 'argument for agnosticism' and for the use of political constructivism as an approach to the question of justice.
Carl Knight
Supervisor Hillel Steiner
Equality, Utility and Entitlement
(Completed 2006) Contemporary political theorists tend to treat one of these principles as fundamental, ignoring the considered judgments that support the other principles. This research examines the three principles and devises a pluralistic account of justice that accommodates the strengths, and sidelines the weaknesses, of each of them.
Adina Preda
Supervisor Hillel Steiner
The Justification of Humanitarian Intervention
(Completed 2006) This research aims to offer a moral justification for unilateral humanitarian intervention, defined as forcible intervention in a state/(political) community in order to stop or prevent human rights violations. Starting from a distinction between rights and reasons to intervene, it analyses the nature and justification of various collective rights, such as states' and group rights, and possible conflicts between these and individual human rights. It then moves on to examine possible reasons for prohibiting humanitarian intervention and, in particular, an argument which implies that, although exceptional instances of humanitarian intervention may be excused or mitigated, a more permissive general rule is not.
Andrew Shorten
Supervisor Steve de Wijze
Treating Cultural Commitments Fairly: A Cosmopolitan Account of Multicultural Justice
Completed 2005
Winner of the Political Studies Association Sir Ernest Barker Prize for Best Political Theory Thesis 2005
This work explores the relationship between liberal philosophy and the politics of cultural diversity. It proposes a normative theory – the fair treatment of cultural commitments argument - regarding how liberalism should respond to the fact of multiculturalism, examining the conditions under which special forms of accommodation for minorities might be necessary, and evaluating which demands can (and cannot) be rightly made on behalf of holders of minority cultural commitments. The argument is grounded on a moderate cosmopolitan ontology, and this distinguishes the approach from a number of alternative approaches to similar issues. This ontology rejects the view that cultural communities are bearers of moral value, and instead holds that culture should affect our considerations of liberal justice at the level of individually held cultural commitments. Such commitments matter because they can be the objects of unfair treatment even in societies governed according to ostensibly neutral procedures, and because the unfair treatment of cultural commitments can constitute an injustice. The argument has three major aims. First, to demonstrate why and how matters of culture and identity should inform our moral, legal and political reasoning. Second, to demonstrate why and how the unfair treatment of cultural commitments can be unjust. Third, to explore the implications of this for our theories of justice more generally. This is achieved, in particular, by configuring a particular (moderate cosmopolitan) conception of citizenship that is compatible with group-differentiated rights, and through a related an examination of the demands of equality and toleration in conditions of cultural diversity.