About

Sharon Lloyd is a Professor of Philosophy, Law, and Political Science at USC Dornsife. Her research focuses on the history of political philosophy, with particular attention to the moral and political theories of Thomas Hobbes. Trained and mentored by John Rawls, Lloyd's scholarly interests include political philosophy, contemporary liberalism, and liberal feminist philosophy, reflecting her background in influential 20th-century political thought. She has a special interest in the moral and political theories of figures such as Machiavelli, Mill, Hobbes, Marx, and Rawls. Lloyd's work in philosophy has attracted the interest of legal scholars and is often published in law reviews, establishing her as an important voice in current liberal feminist discourse. She enjoys teaching in USC's honors program and general education courses on topics such as self-identity, moral responsibility, political obligation, and social ethics, often through innovative approaches like science fiction.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Law
• Philosophy
• Epistemology
• Mathematical economics
• Positive economics
• Law and economics
• Gender studies
• Economics

Selected publications

• Hobbes’s Theory of Responsibility as Support for Sommerville’s Argument Against Hobbes’s Approval of Independency

  Hobbes Studies · 2022 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Epistemology

  Abstract Just as some types of philosophical analysis are more useful than others to historians or political scientists, so, I find, are some sorts of historical research more useful to philosophers than are other sorts. Sommerville makes history useful to non-historians by clarifying the large-scale historical background against which his investigative questions are posed, and then separating out crucial figures, ideas, and events from arcana of interest primarily to specialist historians. His interpretations are relatively neutral, striking a welcome balance between mere reporting of events or textual ideas on the one hand, and on the other, accounts so theoretically laden that they prejudge or foreclose promising interpretive possibilities.

  DOI

• By Force or Wiles: Women in the Hobbesian Hunt for Allies and Authority

  Hobbes Studies · 2020 · 5 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

  The article investigates whether Hobbes’s political theory gives us reason to expect the systematic subordination of women. It argues that who dominates whom is a matter of victory in the quest to pull allies into ordered alliances. The primary means of gaining allies—force and wiles—depend on both skill-fitness and affective fitness. The analyses suggest that it is sex-linked and gender-linked differences in affective fitness—particularly in the intensity of men’s desire to use religious wiles—that most plausibly explain the subjection of women, both across the spectrum of states of nature and within civil societies. Although Hobbes’s political theory enables us to make sense of how it happened, there is nothing in that theory that either necessitates or should cause us to expect the systematic subordination of women.

  DOI

• From Natural Equality to Sexual Subordination in the Theories of Hobbes and Rawls

  Women in the history of philosophy and sciences · 2020 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Richard Norman

  1 shared

• A. John Simmons

  1 shared

• R. E. Ewin

  1 shared

• Dr Daniel Newman

  1 shared

• Samantha Brennan

  1 shared

• Ann E. Cudd

  Villanova University

  1 shared

• Linda C. McClain

  1 shared

• A. P. Martinich

  The University of Texas at Austin

  1 shared

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