Sanjar Akayev

Research

Kafka, unnamed drawing

Currently, I'm working on several research projects in different domains of moral and political philosophy.

My dissertation explores the interplay between friendship and our established theories of justice. Its first part examines the potential problems that relations of friendship may pose for the pursuit of a just society and shows how these problems can be solved. In the second part, I focus on the ways in which the central normative features of friendship can influence and enrich our thinking about justice, equality, and personal autonomy. As part of this investigation, I offer a novel liberal account of civic friendship—a social and political ideal that describes a valuable kind of social relations between individuals who share one social world.

Apart from that, I'm also fascinated by the nature and normative status of close personal relationships. I seek to understand how they function and persevere, what kind of value they might have, and which norms should govern them.

Finally, I sometimes like to write about more applied and pressing issues related to rectificatory/remedial justice, responsibility and liability for state action, the ethics of non-democratic citizenship, and the ethics of migration and demographic policy.

My early interests were in Early Modern philosophy & political thought (Spinoza, Shakespeare) as well as continental political philosophy (Foucault, Strauss). I still consider myself a Spinozist, albeit of a wandering kind ;)

Justice, Equality, and (Personal) Relationships

In this project, I explore various relational approaches to key concepts in liberal political theory, such as personal autonomy, equality, and justice.

Work in progress:

A paper on civic friendship
A paper on distributive justice and personal relationships

The Ethics & Epistemology of Friendship

Work in progress:

A paper on epistemic partiality
A paper on friendship and autonomy

Remedial Obligations and Liability for State Action

In this project, I seek to disentangle various views and arguments that attempt to establish a meaningful (moral) connection between citizens and their states—a connection that is supposed to ground individuals' remedial obligations to compensate for state action. At the moment, I focus on how remedial obligations and liabilites should be assigned in specifically non-democratic settings, which form a distinct normative context that cannot be treated on par with the democratic one.

Work in progress:

A paper on remedial liability
A paper on the distribution of remedial obligations

Spinoza's Realistic Liberalism

This mini-project stems from my longstanding interest in the thought of Baruch Spinoza (who, to this day, remains my foremost philosophical Liebling). In particular, I look to uncover the deep—and often unclear—connection between Spinoza's idealistic moral and political theory expounded in the Ethics and his more realistic writings found in the Political Treatise and the Theological-Political Treatise.

Work in progress:

A paper on Spinoza's conception of friendship
A paper on Spinoza's understanding of political rule

Past Publications (in Russian)

Translations:

Singer, Peter. “Golod, bogatstvo i moral’ [Famine, Affluence, and Morality]”, translated from English and annotated by Anna Vernikovskaya, Alexey Pleshkov, and Sanzhar Akayev. Philosophy. Journal of the Higher School of Economics, 2021, vol. 5 (2), pp. 254-269.

Peer-review papers:

“The Role of Eudaimonism in Spinoza’s Moral Philosophy.” Istoriia Filosofii [History of Philosophy], 2023, vol. 28 (1), pp. 1-13.
“Intellectual Virtues of Historians of Political Philosophy: Leo Strauss’s Approach.” Dialog so Vremenem [Dialogue with Time], 2022, vol. 81, pp. 117-130.
“The Concept of Philosophical Parrhesia in Michel Foucault’s Late Lectures: Genealogy of Critique and Reality of Philosophy,” with Polina Kalashnik. Politeia: Journal of Political Theory, Political Philosophy and Sociology of Politics, December 2021, vol. 4 (103), pp. 24-42.

Google Sites

Report abuse