About

JP Messina is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at Purdue University, where he offers courses in moral and political philosophy, the ethics of data science, and the history of practical philosophy. He also teaches in the college's Cornerstone Program. Before joining Purdue, he held research positions at the University of New Orleans and Wellesley College, and he received his Ph.D. from UC San Diego in 2018. His research explores questions about human freedom across philosophical contexts, including the grounds for deservingness and retributive institutions, the justification and limits of political authority, and the nature of free speech. Messina has written extensively on Immanuel Kant's approach to these issues, with his work appearing in several scholarly venues. His first book, 'Private Censorship,' published by Oxford University Press, addresses related themes.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Sociology
• Epistemology
• Computer Science
• Philosophy
• Psychology
• Archaeology
• Social psychology
• Environmental ethics
• History
• Law and economics

Selected publications

• The postulate of private right and Kant’s semi-historical principles of property

  British Journal for the History of Philosophy · 2020 · 15 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Philosophy
  • Epistemology

  Whereas several commentators have held that Kant’s argument for the postulate of private right fails insofar as it begs the question, I argue here that this criticism misses the mark. Critics have erroneously supposed that the postulate is designed to secure a right to a system of private property. In fact, Kant’s ambitions were more modest: to show that someone (be it an individual, a community, or a state) must be capable of enjoying dominion over external objects of choice. Understood this way, Kant’s argument does not beg the question. Rather, it establishes clearly that freedom requires human dominion over objects, a fact that not all parties to debates over property have recognized. In response to the objection that my interpretation leaves Kant’s account problematically indeterminate, I argue that the question of what system of property is justified cannot be settled from the armchair, independently of the history of acquisition.

  DOI

• Freedom of Expression and the Liberalism of Fear: A Defense of the Darker Mill

  Philosopher's Imprint · 2020 · 3 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Law

  Although many recent free speech skeptics claim Millian credentials, they neglect the more pessimistic elements of Mill's account of human nature. Once we recover the darker elements of Mill's thought, American-style laissez-faire in the domain of expression looks significantly more attractive. Indeed, this paper argues that if Mill is correct about human nature, we have good reason to oppose recent proposed restrictions on expression and to embrace a legal regime that tolerates much speech that is false, obscene, demeaning, and even hateful. While philosophers are right to worry about the substantial moral costs of such regimes, we ought to attempt to address these costs in ways that do not amount to rejecting the regimes themselves.

• Reasonable Pluralism about Desert-Presupposing Moral Responsibility: A Conditional Defense

  The Journal of Value Inquiry · 2020 · 16 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Environmental ethics
  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Chris W. Surprenant

  University of New Orleans

  1 shared

Similar researchers at Purdue University

• Masahiro Murakamih-100
• Zhixiang Chenh-87
• Anthony H Smithh-79
• Clint Chappleh-75
• Laurence B. Leonardh-74