Robert Shaver

I started my career working on Montaigne, Hobbes and Rousseau. Over time, I became more interested in others—Grotius, Smith, Hume—and, for the last twenty-five years, the line of British moral philosophers running from Sidgwick through Moore, Rashdall, Prichard, Carritt, Ross, Broad, and Ewing. To my puzzlement, I’ve also developed an interest in Nietzsche. 

In each case, my aim has been to both reconstruct the philosopher's arguments and evaluate them.

Throughout, I’ve published various non-historical pieces on (for example) welfare, promises, hypothetical imperatives, contractualism, intuitionism, and moral error theory.

• PhD (Philosophy), University of Pittsburgh, 1989
• BA (Philosophy), University of Toronto, 1983

• “Nietzsche on the Value of Power and Pleasure.” Inquiry (forthcoming).
• “Promises as Invitations to Trust.” Philosophical Studies 177, 2020, pp. 1515-1522. 
• “Prichard’s Arguments Against Ideal Utilitarianism.” Utilitas 30, 2018, pp. 54-72. 
• “Sidgwick on Pleasure.” Ethics 126, 2016, pp. 901-28.
• “Sidgwick’s Axioms and Consequentialism.” Philosophical Review 123, 2014, pp. 173-204.
• “Ross on Self and Others.” Utilitas 26, 2014, pp. 303-20.
• “The Birth of Deontology.” In Underivative Duty, ed. Tom Hurka, Oxford University Press, 2011.
• “Contractualism and Restrictions.” Philosophical Studies 132, 2007, pp. 293-9.
• Rational Egoism. Cambridge University Press, 1999. 
• "Sidgwick's False Friends." Ethics 107, 1997, pp. 314-320.