Here, I have a short version of my research statement, a version of my dissertation abstract, and some selected other projects.
Research Statement
Most broadly, my research is interested in the broad intersections of legal, political, and moral philosophy. This is why I was drawn to the criminal law for my dissertation research. My dissertation work shows this and is motivated in large part by skepticism about the ability to explain away the nuances of the ways various beliefs about the law, political right, and moral truth in turn shape actual human practices. Beyond the conceptual framework, this is also why I was especially drawn to the debates around negligence and hate crimes: those areas especially bring out shape and important disagreements about deeply held beliefs that go well beyond the walls of academia.
Dissertation
My dissertation research is on the philosophy of criminal law. There, I argue that by understanding the standards surrounding criminal culpability in the law as a balancing act between the moral task of protecting rights and the political task of promoting state interests, we enable a more sophisticated understanding of various criminal offenses. Most importantly, it is an analysis of the setting of standards that can explain both the moral seriousness of possible harm and important political consequences. Most simply: the criminal law signals “Do not do this!” This simultaneously explains two distinct functions of the criminal law as both protecting moral rights and engaging in a political project of shaping everyday behavior. By recognizing this, we can better explain difficult questions about domains such as criminal negligence and hate crimes.
Some Works in Progress
- “Revisiting the Last Man and Human Chauvinism,” a paper on a seminal paper in environmental philosophy by then-Routley & Routley (later Richard Slyvan and Val Plumwood), arguing against their strong claim that classical ethical theories cannot explain the wrongfulness of mere environmental destruction.
- “The Threefold Origin of Mens Rea, From Augustine to Edward Coke,” a short historical exploration tracing mens rea back to Augustine of Hippo’s sermon on foreswearing and perjury.
- “The Egotist Lie in the Young Rawls and Reinhold Niebuhr’s Influence,” an attempt to explain how Niebuhr’s influence on Rawls’s undergraduate thesis ended up informing on Rawls’s more mature work.
- “Justifications of Social Media Deplatforming and the Problem of Aggregating Harms,” a summary of different justifications of social media deplatforming and argues that various accounts cannot explain the unique question of widespread bans across many platforms at once.
- “Sisyphus Sprinting: Video Game Speedrunning, the Spectacle of Sports, the Silly and the Absurd,” a fun paper that uses video game speedrunning as an example to explore the mundane and how spectacles can be made out of even seemingly meaningless activities.
Joshua Paschal 