David Atenasio will serve as a lecturer this Fall at Frostburg State University. He received his PhD from Loyola University Chicago in 2019. He primarily writes on topics related to complicity, collective action and collective responsibility, but is also working on projects on the nature of consent and the social contract.
What are you working on right now?
At the moment, I am working on a pair of manuscripts on the topic of participatory responsibility. I am interested in how we ought to assign blame to participants in wrongdoing in cases where multiple individuals contribute to some wrongful state of affairs in different ways. I have in mind examples where one party carelessly or recklessly creates or contributes to the conditions that another party utilizes to intentionally carry out wrongdoing. For example, imagine that you carelessly crash your car into a bank, resulting in the death of an employee. It seems to make a difference whether the employee’s death comes about as a result of your haphazard driving or whether a third party utilizes the accident as a diversion to rob the bank, intentionally shooting an employee in the process. However, it is not so easy to say why your share of the blame should differ in the two examples.
In the first manuscript, I develop and defend a consistent theory of how to assign responsibility or liability to those who contribute carelessly to the intentional wrongdoing of others. But I am also interested in how the law deals with such contributory dilemmas. I am currently working on a second manuscript that critically assesses the doctrine of “command responsibility” from international criminal law, which attributes the crimes of subordinates to commanders, even when those commanders are merely careless in failing to prevent their subordinates from violating international law.
What books are currently on your ‘to read’ list?
I am also working on a more ambitious project that aims to reimagine the traditional social contract along more communitarian lines by thinking of it as a compact among collectives instead of individuals. To that end, there is a lot I would like to read on the social contract (Cavendish’s The Contract and Muldoon’s Social Contract Theory for a Diverse World), criticisms of the liberal status quo (Stephens’ Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and Meersheimer’s The Great Delusion), populism (Mouffe’s For a Left Populism) and nationalism (Judis’ The Nationalist Revival).
Have you ever substantially changed your philosophical views?
When I first read Karl Popper’s criticism of Plato’s Republic in The Open Society and Its Enemies, I found it convincing. I was sure that Kallipolis was a projection of Plato’s parochial Greek preferences, and that a modern, pluralistic society ought to be an open testing ground for different experiments in living, as Mill famously puts it. Despite the best efforts of one of my mentors, I now think that it is Plato who has the keener, more enduring insight about morality and the construction of society.
Who do you think is the most underrated philosopher?
Definitely Euthyphro. I will never understand why people think Socrates comes out ahead in that dialogue. Recall that it is Euthyphro who demands justice for the poor and oppressed, even showing the moral courage to prosecute his own father for killing a slave. Also, Socrates resorts to unconvincing, question-begging definitional gymnastics, as has no good answer to Euthyphro’s polytheistic axiological constructivism.
What topic do you think is under explored in philosophy?
I would like to see more work in applied value theory, specifically work that is informed by the social sciences. There is an overwhelming amount of work in philosophy journals on, for instance, the permissibility of various therapeutic procedures in the health sciences, but far less on how best to balance the goods of family, community and work life, even though the latter question seems equally as philosophical as the former. If I am missing all the good work out there, I welcome any suggestions from readers of the APA blog!
This section of the APA Blog is designed to get to know our fellow philosophers a little better. We’re including profiles of APA members that spotlight what captures their interest not only inside the office, but also outside of it. We’d love for you to be a part of it, so please contact us via the interview nomination form here to nominate yourself or a friend.
Dr. Sabrina D. MisirHiralall is an editor at the Blog of the APA who currently teaches philosophy, religion, and education courses solely online for Montclair State University, Three Rivers Community College, and St. John’s University.
