Robert S. Taylor
Associate Professor of Political Science, University of California, Davis

EDUCATION

• Ph.D.    Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, May 2002
• Ph.D.    Economics, Duke University, September 1995
• B.A.      Philosophy, Politics, & Economics, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, summa cum laude, May 1991

CURRENT RESEARCH INTERESTS

Robert S. Taylor specializes in contemporary analytic moral and political philosophy as well as the history of liberal political thought. His current research interests include religious-conservative views on safe sex, the relationship between liberalism and socialism, and Friedrich Hayek's critique of social justice.

BOOKS

• Reconstructing Rawls: The Kantian Foundations of Justice as Fairness. Penn State University Press. 2011; paperback edition 2012. xxiv + 336 pp. {alternative version of Chapter 4 forthcoming in The Blackwell Companion to Rawls, eds. Jon Mandle and David Reidy, Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2013; reviewed in American Political Thought, Ethics, H-Net Reviews, The Journal of Value Inquiry, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, and Philosophy in Review; forthcoming review in The Review of Metaphysics}  introduction  jacket  website

JOURNAL ARTICLES: POLITICAL THEORY

• "Hate Speech, the Priority of Liberty, and the Temptations of Nonideal Theory," Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, forthcoming June 2012.  PDF
• "The Self-Extinguishing Despot: Millian Democratization" (with Yvonne Chiu), Journal of Politics, October 2011, 73(4): 1239-50.  PDF

• "Kant's Political Religion: The Transparency of Perpetual Peace and the Highest Good," Review of Politics, Winter 2010, 72(1): 1-24.  PDF
• "Children as Projects and Persons: A Liberal Antinomy," Social Theory and Practice, October 2009, 35(4): 555-76.  PDF
• "Rawlsian Affirmative Action," Ethics, April 2009, 119(3): 476-506.  PDF
• "Self-Ownership and Transplantable Human Organs," Public Affairs Quarterly, January 2007, 21(1): 89-107.  PDF
• "Democratic Transitions and the Progress of Absolutism in Kant's Political Thought," Journal of Politics, August 2006, 68(3): 556-70. {alternative version forthcoming in Kant's Political Theory: Interpretations and Applications, ed. Elisabeth H. Ellis, Penn State University Press, July 2012}  PDF
• "Kantian Personal Autonomy," Political Theory, October 2005, 33(5): 602-28. {among Top 10 Most Accessed Articles in Political Theory over past 3 years (accessed 3179 times via JSTOR as of April 2012)}  PDF
• "Self-Ownership and the Limits of Libertarianism," Social Theory and Practice, October 2005, 31(4): 465-82. {reprinted in CourseReader: Philosophy and Ethics, Gale/Cengage, 2011}  PDF
• "Self-Realization and the Priority of Fair Equality of Opportunity," Journal of Moral Philosophy, November 2004, 1(3): 333-47. {reprinted in The Legacy of John Rawls, eds. Thom Brooks and Fabian Freyenhagen, Continuum Studies in American Philosophy, September 2005, pp. 34-49}  PDF
• "A Kantian Defense of Self-Ownership," Journal of Political Philosophy, March 2004, 12(1): 65-78.  PDF
• "Rawls's Defense of the Priority of Liberty: A Kantian Reconstruction," Philosophy and Public Affairs, Summer 2003, 31(3): 246-71. {reprinted in John Rawls, ed. David A. Reidy, Ashgate International Library of Essays in the History of Social and Political Thought, May 2008, pp. 193-218}  PDF

JOURNAL ARTICLES: ECONOMICS

• "The Ethic of Care versus the Ethic of Justice: An Economic Analysis," Journal of Socio-Economics, Fall 1998, 27(4): 479-93.  PDF
• "Compensating Behavior and the Drug Testing of High-School Athletes," Cato Journal, Winter 1997, 16(3): 351-64.  PDF
• "A Game-Theoretic Model of Gun Control," International Review of Law and Economics, September 1995, 15(3): 269-88.  PDF

Curriculum Vitae