Faculty

Stephen Nathanson

Professor of Philosophy
Office: 373 Holmes Hall
Phone: 617-373-4169
Email: s.nathanson@neu.edu

Stephen Nathanson teaches courses in ethics and political philosophy. His special areas of interest include issues about the ethics of war, economic justice, patriotism. He is the author of widely reprinted works on the death penalty.

His book Terrorism and the Ethics of War has recently been published by Cambridge University Press. His most recent article is "Patriotism, War, and the Limits of Permissible Partiality" in the Journal of Ethics (2009).

Education

B. A. with Honors in Philosophy, Swarthmore College
Ph. D. in Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University

Main areas of interest: Ethics, Political Philosophy, War and Peace, Economic Justice, Epistemology.

Publications

Books

The Ideal of Rationality, Humanities Press International, 1985.

An Eye for an Eye?-The Immorality of Punishing by Death, Rowman and Littlefield, 1987.

Should We Consent to be Governed?-A Short Introduction to Political Philosophy, Wadsworth, 1992.

Patriotism, Morality, and Peace, Rowman and Littlefield, 1993.

The Ideal of Rationality, Revised edition, Open Court, 1994.

Economic Justice, Prentice-Hall, 1998.

Should We Consent to be Governed?--A Short Introduction to Political Philosophy, Second edition, Wadsworth, 2000.

An Eye for an Eye?-The Immorality of Punishing by Death, Second edition, Rowman and Littlefield, 2001.

Terrorism and the Ethics of War, Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Edited book

John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy With Some of their Applications to Social Philosophy, edited and abridged with an introduction by Stephen Nathanson, Hackett, 2004.

Selected Articles

  • "Does It Matter If the Death Penalty Is Arbitrarily Administered?," Philosophy & Public Affairs, 14 (1985), 149-64.

• "In Defense of `Moderate Patriotism'," Ethics, 99 (1989), 535-52.

• "Is Patriotism Like Racism?," APA Newsletter on Philosophy & the Black Experience 91:2 (1992), 9-11.

• "Fletcher on Loyalty and Universal Morality," Criminal Justice Ethics, 12 (1993), 56-62.

• "Must Patriotism Be an Obstacle to Peace?," International Journal of Group Tensions, 23 (1993), 343-53.

• "Should Drug Crimes Be Punished?," in C. Brown and S. Luper-Foy, eds., Drugs, Morality, and the Law (Garland, 1994), 19-34.

• "Nationalism, Patriotism, and Toleration," in I. Primoratz, ed., Symposium on Toleration in Synthesis Philosophical (International edition of Filozofska Istrazivanja), 9 (1994), 135-52.

• "Crude Alternatives: A Comment on Martha Nussbaum's `Patriotism or Cosmopolitanism'," Boston Review XX (Feb/March 1995), 17.

• "Making Sense of Globalism," APA Newsletter on Philosophy and International Cooperation 95:1 (1995), 116-18.

• "An Eye for an Eye? The Immorality of Punishing by Death," in J. Haber, ed., Ethics for Today and Tomorrow (Jones & Bartlett, 1997), 117-22.

• "Nationalism and the Limits of Global Humanism," in R. McKim and J. McMahan, eds., The Morality of Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 1997), 176-87.

• "Should Patriotism Have a Future?," in E. Staub and D. Bar-Tal, eds., Patriotism in the Lives of Individuals and Nations (Nelson-Hall, 1997), 311-26.

• "How (Not) to Think about the Death Penalty," International Journal of Applied Philosophy (11 Winter/Spring 1997), 7-10.

• "Is the Death Penalty What Murderers Deserve?" in S. Luper, ed., Living Morally (Harcourt Brace, 2000), 543-53.

• “Prerequisites for Morally Credible Condemnations of Terrorism,” in William Crotty, ed., The Politics of Terror: The U.S. Response to 9/11 (Northeastern U. Press, 2004), 3-34.

• "Can Terrorism Be Morally Justified?" in James Sterba, ed., Morality in Practice, 7th ed. (Wadsworth, 2004), 602-610.

• “Why We Should Put the Death Penalty to Rest,” in A. Cohen and C. H. Wellman, eds., Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics, Blackwell, 2005.

• “The ‘Arbitrariness Argument” for Abolishing Capital Punishment,” in Evan Mandery, ed., Capital Punishment: A Balanced Examination, Jones & Bartlett, 412-29.

• “Equality, Sufficiency, Decency: Three Criteria of Economic Justice,” in F. Adams, ed., Ethical Issues for the Twenty-First Century, Philosophy Documentation Center, 2005.

• “Is Terrorism Ever Morally Permissible? An Inquiry into the Right to Life,” in M. Sellers and D. Reidy, eds., Universal Human Rights: Moral Order in a Divided World, Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.

• “John Stuart Mill on the Ownership and Use of Land,” Philosophy and the Contemporary World, Summer 2005.

• “Terrorism, Supreme Emergency, and Noncombatant Immunity: A Critique of Michael Walzer’s Ethic of War,” Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly, January 2006; 3-25.

• “Civil Disobedience,” in D. Borchert, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd ed., Macmillan Reference, 2006.

• “Terrorism and the Ethics of War,” in Steven Lee, ed., Intervention, Terrorism, and Torture: Challenges to Just War Theory in the 21st Century, Springer, 2006.

• “Is Cosmopolitan Anti-Patriotism a Virtue?,” in A. Pavkovic and I. Primoratz, eds., Patriotism: Philosophical and Political Perspectives (Ashgate, 2007).

• “Patriotism, War, and the Limits of Permissible Partiality,” forthcoming, Journal of Ethics.