
Sem de Maagt
I am an assistant professor in ethics and political philosophy at the Ethics Institute of Utrecht University, The Netherlands.
My research connects normative (political) ethics, questions about how we should act, and meta-ethics, questions about the status and justification of moral judgements. Against the grain of the dominant tendency in ethics to (over)specialize, I think that substantive ethical questions can only be answered once we know how moral judgements can be justified and vice versa, that meta-ethical questions cannot be separated from normative ethics.
I teach courses in ethics and political philosophy and I am the co-organizer of the PhD Spring School ‘Ethical Theory and Moral Practice’ for the Dutch Research School of Philosophy (see here for the 2018 edition). I am the co-supervisor of the PhD projects of Florian Bekkers and Dick Timmer.
Communicating philosophy to a broader audience is very important to me. I have co-authored a book on personal and practical identity published with Uitgeverij Boom (see my publications), I am a co-founder of a popular academic philosophy blog www.bijnaderinzien.org and I am the coordinator of the so-called ‘Ethische Annotaties’ of Utrecht University. I co-organize the monthly ‘Filosofisch Cafe‘ and the yearly ‘Utrechtse Dag van de Filosofie’.
In January 2017, I defended my PhD thesis ‘Constructing Morality: Transcendental Arguments in Ethics.’ My PhD thesis has been awarded with the Legatum Stolpianum, one of the oldest still existing scientific prizes in The Netherlands. I have received my Bachelor’s degree from University College Maastricht (2009, cum laude) and my Research Master’s degree in Philosophy from Utrecht University (2011, cum laude). During my PhD project, I spent a term at the Manchester Centre for Political Theory (2014) and another term at the London School of Economics (2015). I was a visiting researcher at the Faculty of Philosophy of Cambridge University for the autumn term of 2017.
Publications
Book
- IK: Filosofie van het Zelf (2016)
Uitgeverij Boom
With Leon de Bruin and Fleur Jongepier
Articles
- Why Humean Constructivists Should Become Kantian Constructivists (‘Online First’)
Philosophical Explorations - It Only Takes Two to Tango: Against Grounding Morality in Interaction (‘Online First’)
Philosophical Studies - Korsgaard’s Other Argument for Interpersonal Morality: The Argument from the Sufficiency of Agency (2018)
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - Reflective Equilibrium and Moral Objectivity (2017)
Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy - In Defence of Fact-Dependency (2014)
Canadian Journal of Philosophy
Other
- Report on the European heritage of philosophical theorizing about justice (2018)
ETHOS project, European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme grant agreement No. 727112.
With Rippon, Simon; Theuns, Tom; Zala, Miklos & Van den Brink, Bert. - Can Person-Centered Care Deal With Atypical Persons? (2013)
The American Journal of Bioethics
With Ingrid Robeyns
In Dutch
- De Constructie van Objectieve Moraal: Tussen Moreel Realisme en Moreel Relativisme (2018)
In: Overtuigd en toch onzeker: over de rechtvaardiging van ‘onze’ moraal. Michiel Meijer (ed.). Valkhof Pers. - Ethische kanttekeningen bij overerving en erfbelasting (2018)
In: Voor wie is de erfenis? Over vrijheid, gelijkheid, en familiegevoel. Paul de Beer, Jelmer van der Meer, Janneke Plantenga & Wiemer Salverda (Eds.). Amsterdam: Van Gennep.
Met Ingrid Robeyns - Academische filosofie = publieksfilosofie? (2016)
Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte
Met Fleur Jongepier