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Alexandra Couto


Profile

Research interests: Ethics, political philosophy and applied ethics.

Alexandra Couto, MA in International Relations, Graduate Institute of International Studies (Geneva), MPhil in Political Theory, Oxford (Berrow Scholar); DPhil in Political Theory, Oxford (Berrow Scholar).


Alexandra is currently affiliated to the project Innocently Benefitting from Injustice at the Philosophy Department in Oslo (CSMN). Her current research is thus centred on the Beneficiary Pays Principle, that is, the principle that states that one might acquire remedial duties merely by benefitting innocently from injustice. Before that, her research was focused on the following topics: the role of responsibility in luck egalitarianism, the conditions for the justifiability of interpersonal forgiveness, freedom of speech and the grounds for taking privacy to be valuable. She has also written a book Liberal Perfectionism: The Reasons that Goodness Gives (De Gruyter) defending a minimal form of liberal perfectionism.

Publications:

  • Couto, A., Liberal Perfectionism: The Reasons that Goodness Gives, De Gruyter, 2014.  
  • Couto A., ‘The Reactive Attitudes Account of Forgiveness and the Second-Person Standpoint’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 2016.  
  • Couto, A., ‘Purity in Concepts: Defending the Social Sciences’, Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook, vol. 18, 2016.

  • Couto, A., ‘Reactive Attitudes, Disdain and the Second-Person Standpoint’, Grazer Philosophische Studien, vol. 90, 2015.

  • Couto, A., ‘Luck Egalitarianism and What Valuing Responsibility Requires’, Critical Review of International and Social Philosophy, 2015.

  • Couto, A., ‘Privacy and Justification’, Res Publica, 12, 3, 2006 (Winner of the Brave New World Essay Prize).

  • Couto, A., ‘Justice, Freedom of Expression and Copyright, in Hildebrandt M. and Van den Berg B. (ed.), Information, Freedom and Property, The Philosophy of Law Meets the Philosophy of Technology, Routledge, 2016.

  • Couto, A., ‘Free Speech and Copyright’, in Intellectual Property and Theories of Justice, eds., A. Gosseries, A. Marciano and A. Strowel, Palgrave, 2008.

Office hours:

Thursday 9-10 am

Monday 4.15-5.15 pm

Note: there will be no office hours on 30th May, for week 7 by appointment only and then from 11am to 1pm, or email to make an alternative appointment.

Email: A.Couto@warwick.ac.uk