Isaac Taylor



Postdoctoral Fellow

Resident at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:
September 2015‒August 2017

Research topic at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:
»Ethics of Counter-Terrorism«

Project outline:
States take a variety of different measures in their attempts to stop terrorism. These include not only the more visible preventative strategies associated with the so-called »war on terror« the use of military force and widespread surveillance of individuals' activities but also other policies aimed at reducing terrorist violence - such as integrating different communities in the hope of reducing home-grown terrorism and even negotiating with current and former terrorists in search of a peaceful solutions. My research investigates what moral limits should be placed on these sorts of practices. Is there something morally distinctive about terrorism which means that widely-endorsed moral rules and legal frameworks may permissibly be set aside in combating it? (Isaac Taylor)

Funding of the stay:
»Justitia Amplificata. Rethinking Justice − Applied and Global«

In 2015/16 Isaac Taylor's fellowship is sponsored by the research centre »Justitia Amplificata. Rethinking Justice − Applied and Global«. In 2016/17 his stay is supported by the Alfons und Gertrud Kassel-Stiftung.

Scholarly profile of Isaac Taylor


Isaac Taylor received his DPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford in 2015. His thesis was titled »Distributive Justice and Global Public Goods«, and looked at how the costs and benefits of global public good production should be shared among states. Between 2015 and 2016, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies »Justitia Amplificata«, at Goethe University Frankfurt, and investigated how responsibilities to conduct counter-terrorism should be assigned to members of the international community. His current research project builds on this to ask what moral principles should guide counter-terrorist policy. More generally, he is interested in questions concerning global justice and the ethics of armed conflict.

Main areas of research:
Political philosophy, global justice, ethics of armed conflict.

Selected publications:
  1. »Privatising War: Assessing the Decision to Hire Private Military Contractors«, in: Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, advance online publication.
  2. (with David Miller) »Distributive Justice and Public Goods«, in: Serena Olsaretti (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Distributive Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press (forthcoming).
  3. »Data Collection, Counterterrorism, and the Right to Privacy«, in: Politics, Philosophy & Economics, advance online publication June 22, 2017.
  4. »State Responsibility and Counterterrorism«, in: Ethics & Global Politics, 9(1), 2016, pp. 1-19.
  5. »Communication, Efficiency, and Fairness in the European Union«, in: Public Affairs Quarterly, 30(2), 2016, pp. 129-147.
  6. »Communication, Efficiency, and Fairness in the European Union«, in: Public Affairs Quarterly, Vol. 30,2 (2016).
  7. »Language as a Global Public Good«, in: Res Publica, Vol. 20,4 (2014).
  8. »Practices, Institutions, and Global Public Good Regimes«, in: Raisons Politiques, Vol. 51 (2013).
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