David O. Brink

Welcome to my home page. I am a Professor in and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of California, San Diego and a Director of the Institute for Law and Philosophy at the University of San Diego School of Law. My research interests are in ethical theory, history of ethics, and jurisprudence. My work in ethics focuses on foundational questions about practical reason, moral demands, and the normativity of ethics. My approach blends historical concern with the views of important figures and traditions in the history of ethics and systematic concern with the clearest and most plausible formulations of first principles. My work in jurisprudence focuses on traditional issues in analytical jurisprudence about the nature of law and legal interpretation as well as substantive issues in constitutional and criminal jurisprudence.

I received my Ph.D. in Philosophy from Cornell University in 1985. I served as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Case Western Reserve University for two years, before going to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I taught for seven years as Assistant and then Associate Professor of Philosophy. During 1986 I was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Stanford University. I have been fortunate to hold fellowships with the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1990-91), the University of California Presidential Committee in the Humanities (1997-98), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (2002-03).

My main interest, outside of philosophy, is my family. My wife, Bonny Sweeney, is a plaintiffs' class-action antitrust attorney at the law firm of Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP. She heads their antitrust section and is currently Chair of the Antitrust and Unfair Competition Law Section of the California State Bar Association. She is an avid runner and has run two marathons and several long distance relay races. We have two sons, Ben (born 1990) and Sam (born 1993). Ben is junior at La Jolla Country Day, where he plays baseball and roller hockey. He also plays ice hockey with the San Diego Gulls travel ice hockey team (18AA). Sam is a freshman at La Jolla Country Day. He plays a mean cello and surfs and snowboards whenever he can. He's coming out of hockey retirement this year to play for the school team.

My principal avocation these days is hockey. I grew up in Minneapolis and played hockey in high school. Though I loved my Minnesota North Stars, my favortie team was Bobby Orr's Boston Bruins of the late 1960s and early 1970s. I stopped playing hockey completely when I went off to college and didn't play again for 20 years. I rediscovered my childhood passion when Ben was four years old and wanted to play inline hockey at a local YMCA. The Y talked me into coaching, which led to playing in adult leagues, which led to mid-life addiction. I've been coaching inline and ice hockey more or less continuously since the mid-1990s. I've served as an assistant coach for ice hockey teams in the San Diego Gulls and La Jolla Jaguars organizations, and I am currently Head Coach of the La Jolla Country Day varisty inline hockey team. When healthy, I still play hockey. I am currently playing on two inline hockey teams and one ice hockey team. Sometimes Bonny thinks that this fascination with hockey is too much. But then I remind her that it is a relatively benign form of mid-life crisis.

Select Publications

Perfectionism and the Common Good: Themes in the Philosophy of T.H. Green (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003).
T.H. Green's Prolegomena to Ethics, ed. D. Brink (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003).
Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
"The Significance of Desire" Oxford Studies in Metaethics 3 (forthcoming).
"Mill's Moral and Political Philosophy" Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
"The Autonomy of Ethics" in The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, ed. M. Martin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
"Some Forms and Limits of Consequentialism" in Oxford Handbook in Ethical Theory, ed. D. Copp (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
"Immaturity, Normative Competence, and Juvenile Transfer: How (Not) to Punish Minors for Major Crimes" Texas Law Review 82 (2004): 1555-85.
"Prudence and Authenticity: Intrapersonal Conflicts of Value" Philosophical Review 112 (2003): 217-48.
"Millian Principles, Freedom of Expression, and Hate Speech" Legal Theory 7 (2001): 119-57.
"Impartiality and Associative Duties" Utilitas 13 (2001): 152-72.
"Realism, Naturalism, and Moral Semantics" Social Philosophy & Policy 18 (2001): 154-76.
"Legal Interpretation, Objectivity, and Morality" in Objectivity in Law and Morals, ed. B. Leiter (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
"Eudaimonism, Love and Friendship, and Political Community" Social Philosophy & Policy 16 (1999): 252-89.
"Moral Motivation" Ethics 107 (1997): 4-32.
"Self-love and Altruism" Social Philosophy & Policy 14 (1997): 122-57.
"Kantian Rationalism: Inescapability, Authority, and Supremacy" in Ethics and Practical Reason, ed. G. Cullity and B. Gaut (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
"Rational Egoism and the Separateness of Persons" in Reading Parfit, ed. J. Dancy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).
"Moral Conflict and Its Structure" Philosophical Review 103 (1994): 215-247.
"Common Sense and First Principles in Sidgwick's Methods" Social Philosophy & Policy 11 (1994): 179-201.
"The Separateness of Persons, Distributive Norms, and Moral Theory" in Value, Welfare, and Morality, ed. C. Morris and R. Frey (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
"Mill's Deliberative Utilitarianism" Philosophy & Public Affairs 21 (1992): 67-103.
"Sidgwick and the Rationale for Rational Egoism" in Essays on Henry Sidgwick, ed. B. Schultz (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
"Legal Theory, Legal Interpretation, and Judicial Review" Philosophy & Public Affairs (1988): 105-48.
"Utilitarian Morality and the Personal Point of View" The Journal of Philosophy 83 (1986): 417-38.
"Legal Positivism and Natural Law Reconsidered" The Monist 68 (1985): 364-87.
"Moral Realism and the Sceptical Arguments from Disagreement and Queerness" Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62 (1984): 111-25.

Online Publications

JSTOR and PDF

Curriculum Vitae

CV

Courses

PHIL 13: Ethics (Fall 2003)
PHIL 31: Ancient Philosophy (Fall 2005)
PHIL 100: Socrates and Plato (Fall 2004)
PHIL 161: Topics in the History of Ethics: Greek Ethics (Fall 2004)
PHIL 167: Contemporary Political Philosophy (Fall 2005)
PHIL 168: Philosophy of Law (Winter 2008)
PHIL 202: Practical Reason (Winter 2004)
PHIL 202: Mill's Moral and Political Philosophy (Winter 2005)
PHIL 260: Persons & Values (Winter 2006)
PHIL 260: The Normativity of Ethics (Spring 2007)
PHIL 260: Partial Responsibility (with Dana Nelkin) (Spring 2008)

Graduate Study in Philosophy

Advice for Students Contemplating Graduate Study

Hockey

La Jolla Country Day Varsity Inline Hockey

My Family

Pictures

E-mail

dbrink@ucsd.edu

N.B. You can also use the Dialectizer to view my homepage in Piglatin.

This site was last modified on 4-4-08