About

Dan Moller is a professor with a focus on political philosophy, particularly in the areas of libertarianism and economic growth. His research explores the implications of these concepts on society and the individual, often drawing from historical and contemporary examples.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Law
• Aesthetics
• Philosophy
• Epistemology

Selected publications

• Utopia and the minimal state

  Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy · 2026-02-19

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• A Theory of Tragedy

  Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism · 2026-02-17

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  Abstract Theories of tragedy are out of style, with most recent work focusing on narrower questions, like why we seek out the negative emotions associated with tragedy. But what makes something a tragedy rather than just another sad story? A theory of tragedy should answer this question and explain why it is not trivial. It should also explain why the tragic is not a purely aesthetic category—wars, poverty, and divorce can all be tragic, or not. I offer a theory of tragedy based on the paradoxical overlay of necessity and contingency leading to disaster. In a tragedy your fate seems inevitable yet is strictly avoidable. This account fits both fiction like Agamemnon, and situations and events, like the Prisoner’s Dilemma or World War I.

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• The Rationality of Emotions Across Time

  Dialogue · 2025-01-14

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  Abstract Philosophers have struggled to explain the mismatch of emotions and their objects across time, as when we stop grieving or feeling angry despite the persistence of the underlying cause. I argue for a sceptical approach that says that these emotional changes often lack rational fit. The key observation is that our emotions must periodically reset for purely functional reasons that have nothing to do with fit. I compare this account to David Hume’s sceptical approach in matters of belief, and conclude that resistance to it rests on a confusion similar to one that he identifies.

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• Keeping ideology in its place

  Philosophical Studies · 2024 · 1 citations

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  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Epistemology
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• REDISTRIBUTION AND SELF-OWNERSHIP

  Social Philosophy and Policy · 2019-01-01 · 1 citations

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  Abstract: Debates about libertarianism and redistribution often revolve around self-ownership. There are two main reasons for this: first, self-ownership is often featured in Lockean accounts of property that endow us with a claim to the resources that are up for redistribution. Second, self-ownership has sometimes been mustered as a way of resisting the additional labor that is said to be required by redistributive schemes. In this essay, I argue that these appeals to self-ownership are misguided. However, unlike most critics of these appeals, I don’t wish to claim that redistribution is therefore vindicated. On the contrary, my main goal is to show that there are alternatives to invoking self-ownership that are more effective and that better capture the core intuition behind libertarian objections to redistribution.

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• Global Justice and Economic Growth

  2019-05-14

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  This chapter argues that philosophers have widely ignored the only thing that has worked to bring large numbers of people out of poverty—economic growth—and that this is an important mistake. Most philosophers instead focus on altruism and foreign aid, even though these don’t seem ever to have worked at scale. I begin by explaining the nature and importance of economic growth, and the way in which economic history should affect our thinking about international poverty. I go on to consider prominent work on global justice, and point out that such work rarely mentions economic growth, or engages any of the literature on the subject. However, I also acknowledge that things are not so straightforward: economic growth may seem to lack practical valence in light of how hard it has proven to reliably induce growth. I conclude with some lessons that growth and the invisible hand have to teach us about global justice all the same. In particular, focusing on growth can help us avoid offering counterproductive solutions to problems of dire poverty, and suggests changes in how we respond, both institutionally and individually.

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• Luck and Opportunity

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2019-01-24

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  Classical liberal views about the state are often held to be incompatible with a sober appreciation of the role of luck in determining social outcomes. But it is surprisingly rare to see the case made for supposing that considerations of luck alone support redistribution. Instead, most arguments drawing on the role of luck depend on strong background assumptions compared to which luck plays a relatively minor role. And once we do focus on pure considerations of luck, it turns out to be difficult to marshal these toward an argument for redistribution. The chapter further reviews evidence on intergenerational mobility and shows that we can acknowledge that such mobility may sometimes be limited while denying that redistribution is the proper remedy, especially in light of the continued effectiveness of choice suggested by the evidence.

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• Dilemmas of Political Correctness

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2019-01-24 · 11 citations

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  Political correctness plays an important role in debates about poverty, work, and desert, and thus in debates about libertarianism. This chapter shows that there are legitimate reasons to uphold norms against impugning the public status of historically victimized communities, which is central to political correctness. However, upholding such norms also incurs costs, meaning that political correctness often confronts us with dilemmas. These costs are not merely expressive but crucially involve a form of collective irrationality. This manifests itself in Orwellian discourse in how we use terms like “diversity,” in the analysis of causal structures like the attribution of airline accidents that we are reluctant to associate with stereotypes, and in backfire, as when Europeans are reluctant to discuss problems with the project of a currency union.

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• Morality and the State

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2019-01-24

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  This chapter argues that moral norms constrain the state. It rejects the idea that a group of people forming a polity can appeal to emergent norms that contravene the morality we accept at the interpersonal level. This means that the state may not do things to individuals that appropriately situated individuals may not do to each other. It also argues that we should ignore revisionist versions of utilitarianism when doing political philosophy. Revisionist utilitarianism may be true, but that truth would upend so much of what we believe that we are better off setting it aside in a book that is about political organization.

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• The Epistemology of Popularity and Incentives

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2019-01-24

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  This chapter examines the neglected epistemology of markets. It argues that we often get useful information from markets concerning popularity and incentives, and that these should inform our decision-making. The popularity of a service provider despite being located in a dangerous neighborhood or being considered unattractive, for example, is an important signal that should guide our thinking. So should the incentive structure a service provider faces, for instance, whether he or she can take customers for granted or not. Both constitute evidence that we are likely to receive comparatively good service, since their popularity comes despite marked disadvantages, and their incentive structure is aligned with our own aims as consumers. Applications include dining, art, education, and law.

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Frequent coauthors

• C. Lorius

  1 shared