Joseph Heath

 

Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto (http://philosophy.utoronto.ca/),

and School of Public Policy and Governance, University of Toronto (http://www.publicpolicy.utoronto.ca/)

 

University College (#149)

15 King’s College Circle,

Toronto, ON, M5S 3H7

 

Phone: 416.978.8094

 

Courses

All of my course websites are on Blackboard: http://portal.utoronto.ca

 

Research

My work is all related, in one way or another, to critical social theory in the tradition of the Frankfurt School. The hallmark of this tradition is that of close engagement with the social sciences, but in a way that involves a rejection of value-neutrality, in favour of a style of inquiry governed by what Jürgen Habermas once called the “emancipatory interest.” In the late 20th century, critical theorists became increasingly preoccupied with the so-called “normative foundations of social criticism.” Rather than doing critical theory, they spent most of their time worrying about how a critical theory of society might even be possible, given the all-encompassing nature of culture and ideology. The result has been a generation of critical theorists who seldom get around to actually criticizing anything. This is a dead-end that I have tried to avoid in my research. As a result, there are two distinct dimensions to my work. I do academic work, which attempts to address questions of normative foundations, and I also do popular work, where I engage in critical commentary. I maintain a fairly strict partition between the two (unlike some people, I don’t find it either amusing or illuminating to give academic treatment to “pop” subjects). I mention this partly as a warning: you cannot always discern my fully-considered, appropriately nuanced, and properly footnoted view by reading the popular work.

 

Popular Books

Filthy Lucre

This book was published by HarperCollins in Canada and by Scribe/Penguin down under. The U.S. edition is being published by Random House in March 2010. French (Quebec), Spanish, Portuguese, Korean and Chinese translations are forthcoming. You can find some video of me talking it up here, here and here.

 

The Rebel Sell (co-authored with Andrew Potter)

This book was published by HarperCollins in Canada, John Wiley in the U.K. The American edition was published under the unfortunate title Nation of Rebels, by HarperBusiness. The book has since appeared in the following languages: Spanish, French, German, Norwegian, Danish, Russian and Korean. Translations are forthcoming in Chinese, Turkish, Serbian and Indonesian.

 

The Efficient Society

This book was published by Penguin in Canada, and also is available in French translation (from Les presses de l’Université de Montreal).

 

 

Academic Books

Communicative Action and Rational Choice

This is a critical study of Habermas’s theory of communicative action, from the perspective of contemporary rational choice theory. It was published by MIT Press in 2001. A summary can be found in this review, by Cristina Lafont.

 

Following the Rules

This is a more general book on rational action theory and moral philosophy, published by Oxford University Press in 2008. It was originally titled “Deontic Constraint.” A summary can be found in this review, by Joseph Mendola.

 

 

Academic Papers (organized by topic)

Justice and Morality

• “Political Egalitarianism,” Social Theory and Practice, 34 (2008): 486-516 ( ms ).

• “The Benefits of Cooperation,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 34 (2006): 313-351 ( ms ).

• “Envy and Efficiency,” Revue de philosophie économique, 13 (2006). ( ms )

• “Rawls on Global Distributive Justice: A Defence,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume, ed. Daniel Weinstock (Lethbridge: University of Calgary Press, 2007). ( ms )

• “On the Scope of Egalitarian Justice,” Les ateliers de l’éthique, 1 (2006). ( link )

• “Dworkin’s Auction,” Politics, Philosophy and Economics, 3 (2005): 313-335. ( full text )

• "Resource Egalitarianism and the Politics of Recognition," Adding Insult to Injury, ed. Kevin Olson (London: Verso, 2004).

• “The Transcendental Necessity of Morality,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 67 (2003). ( full text )

• “Culture: Choice or Circumstance?” Constellations, 5:2 (1998): 183-200. ( full text)

• “Immigration, Multiculturalism and the Social Contract,” Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, 10:2 (1997):343-61. ( full text)

• “Intergenerational Cooperation and Distributive Justice,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 27:3 (1997):361-76. ( full text )

• “A Multi-Stage Game Model of Morals by Agreement,” Dialogue, 35:3 (1996): 529-52.

 

Business Ethics

• “The Uses and Abuses of Agency Theory,” Business Ethics Quarterly (forthcoming) (ms).

• “Business Ethics and Moral Motivation: A Criminological Perspective,” Journal of Business Ethics, 83 (2008): 595-614.

• “Reasonable Restrictions on Underwriting,” Research in Ethical Issues in Organizations, Vol. 7, ed. Patrick Flanagan, Patrick Primeaux and William Ferguson (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006). ( ms )

• “An Adversarial Ethic for Business: or, When Sun-Tzu met the Stakeholder,” Journal of Business Ethics, 69 (2006). ( ms )

• “Business Ethics Without Stakeholders,” Business Ethics Quarterly, 16 (2006): 533-557 ( ms ).

• “Stakeholder Theory, Corporate Governance, and Public Management,” with Wayne Norman, Journal of Business Ethics, 53 (2004): 247-265.

• “A Market Failures Approach to Business Ethics,” Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy, Vol. 9 (Berlin: Springer: 2004). ( full text )

 

Action Theory

• “Procrastination and the Extended Will,” with Joel Anderson, The Thief of Time, eds. Mark White and Chrisoula Andreou (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). ( ms )

• “Methodological Individualism,” Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy (2005). ( link )

• “Practical Irrationality and the Structure of Decision Theory,” in Sarah Stroud and Christine Tappolet, eds Weakness of Will and Practical Irrationality (Oxford: Clarendon, 2003).

• “The Robustness of Altruism as an Evolutionary Strategy,” with Scott Woodcock, Biology and Philosophy 17:4 (2002): 567-590. ( full text)

• “Rational Choice with Deontic Constraint,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 31:3 (2001): 361-388.

• “Brandom et les sources de la normativité,” Philosophiques, 28 (2001) : 27-46. ( full text) ( english version)

• “A Pragmatist Theory of Convergence,” Pragmatism, Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume XXII, ed. C.J. Misak (Lethbridge: University of Calgary Press, 1999).

• “The Structure of Normative Control,” Law and Philosophy, 17:4 (1998): 419-442. ( full text)

• “Foundationalism and Practical Reason,” Mind 106:3 (1997):452-73. ( full text)

 

Critical Theory

• “Thorstein Veblen and American Social Criticism,” in Cheryl Misak, ed. Oxford Handbook of American Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) (ms).

• “Liberal Autonomy and Consumer Sovereignty,” Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism, ed. Joel Anderson and John Christman (Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press: 2005).

• “Liberalization, Modernization, Westernization,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 30 (2004): 665-690.

• “Les soins de santé comme marchandises,” Éthique publique 5:1 (2003): 84-89. ( english version)

• “Reply to Narveson,” Dialogue 42:2, (2003): 373-78.

• “Should Productivity Growth be a Social Priority?” Review of Economic Performance and Social Progress, vol. 2, ed. Andrew Sharpe, Keith Banting, France St-Hilaire (Ottawa: CSLS-IRPP, 2002). ( full text)

• "Problems in the Theory of Ideology," Pragmatism and Critical Theory, ed. James Bohman and William Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001).

• “The Structure of Hip Consumerism,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 27 (2001): 1-17. ( full text)

• "Ideology, Irrationality and Collectively Self-Defeating Behaviour," Constellations, 7:3 (2000): 363-371. ( full text)

 

Habermas

• “Habermas and Analytical Marxism,” Philosophy and Social Criticism (forthcoming).

• “Reply to Critics,” Dialogue, 34:2 (2005): 391-398 (symposium on Communicative Action and Rational Choice).

• “Habermas,” Blackwell Companion to Pragmatism, John Shook and Joseph Margolis, eds. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005).

• “What is a Validity Claim?” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 24:4 (1998):23-41. ( full text )

• “Is Language a Game?” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 26:1 (1996): 1-28. ( full text )

• “Rational Choice as Critical Theory,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 22:5 (1996): 43-62. ( full text )

• “Threats, Promises and Communicative Action,” European Journal of Philosophy, 3:3 (1995): 225-41. ( full text )

• “The Problem of Foundationalism in Habermas’s Discourse Ethics,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 21:1 (1995): 77-100. ( full text )

 

Monographs:

• The Myth of Shared Values in Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Management Development, 2003). ( link )

 

 

Work in Progress and Unpublished Manuscripts:

 

• “Legitimation Crisis in the Later Work of Jurgen Habermas” (ms)

• “The Democracy Deficit in Canada” (ms)

• “Three Evolutionary Precursors to Morality” (ms)

• “Two Myths about Canada-U.S. Integration” (ms)

• “The Status of Conventional Morality”

 

 

Last updated July 15, 2009