dr. A.T. (Andreas) Schmidt

I work in political theory, ethics and the philosophy of public policy. Here are some of the themes that run through my work.
    In my writings on freedom, I develop a new, ability-based measure of overall individual freedom, discuss how to distribute freedom across persons and what role freedom should play in a theory of justice. In doing so, I aim to bring together discussions from both philosophy and economics. See, for example, my papers Abilities and the Sources of Unfreedom and An unresolved problem: freedom across lifetimes.      Sometimes, I leave the realm of pure reasoning and apply the abstract debate on freedom to politics and public policy. For example, in two papers, I argue that non-human animals have an interest in socio-political freedom and discuss in which sense we are obliged to liberate animals, for example here.
My interest in freedom and distributive justice also made me think more about health policy. I explore issues such as health behaviour change, tobacco control, nudging, mindfulness-based interventions, and the connection between social inequality, health and well-being. See, for example, The Power to Nudge, The Ethics and Politics of Mindfulness-Based Interventions and Withdrawing vs. Withholding and Tobacco Control.
     Finally, I am a consequentialist of sorts. But I believe consequentialism is less cray – or counterintuitive – than many philosophers think. In a series of papers, I develop a consequentialist framework for blame and responsibility and demonstrate how such a framework answers some famous objections to consequentialism. See, for example, Being Good by Doing Good.

See my personal website for more on my research and publications.