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Dr. Leonard Kahn

Dean, College of Arts and Sciences

Education

DPhil, Oxford University

Departments

  • College of Arts and Sciences
  • Philosophy

Expertise

  • Ethics
  • Philosophy

Bio

Before coming to Loyola, I taught in the Department of Philosophy at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. During the 2021-2022 academic year I was the Donald and Beverly Freeman Fellow at the US Naval Academy's Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership. I have also been a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Calgary in Calgary, Alberta and a Visiting Scholar at both the Yale University Center for Bioethics and the Hastings Center for Bioethics. I completed my doctorate at the University of Oxford (Magdalen College) under the supervision of Derek Parfit and Roger Crisp. While working on my doctorate, I was a Visiting Lecturer at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and at the University of Reading in Reading, UK.

My primary areas of research are moral theory and applied ethics, especially the ethics of technology and just war theory, though my teaching interests include political philosophy, philosophy of law, philosophy of mind and action, feminist philosophy, and both decision and game theory.

Classes Taught

  • Ethics
  • Making Moral Decisions
  • Philosophy of the Human Person
  • Seminar: Matters of Life and Death
  • Philosophy and Feminism
  • Seminar: The Ethics of War
  • Global Ethics
  • Seminar: The Social Contract and Its Limits
  • Decision and Game Theory
  • Seminar: Forgiveness
  • Social Justice
  • Seminar: Problems from Parfit
  • ​Seminar: Social Justice, from Theory to Practice 
  • Law and Morality
  • Seminar: Freedom, Rights, and the State of Nature
  • Honors Seminar: World Poverty and Effective Altruism 
  • Philosophy of Mind
  • First-Year Seminar: Philosophy and Science Fiction Films
  • Philosophy of Law
  • Moral Reasoning for Naval Leaders
  • Ethics and Artificial Intelligence

Areas of Expertise

  • Moral Theory
  • Applied Ethics

Publications

  • Just War, Proportionality, and Environmentally Mediated Military Harm Fragile Lands, Power Politics: Effects of Violence and Injustice on People, Politics, and the Environment (Brill), edited by Rachel Dichter and Kathryn Schmidt, (Author forthcoming)

  • "Buying Luxuries and Saving Lives," Southwest Philosophical Studies, (Author forthcoming)

  • “How Soon Is Now? On the Timing & Conditions for Adopting Widespread Use of Autonomous Vehicles," Autonomous Vehicle Ethics: Beyond the Trolley Problem, edited by Ryan Jenkins et al., Oxford University Press (Author, 2022)

  • "Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems and Respect for Basic Human Dignity," Frontiers in Big Data, September 2022: 1-7 (Author, 2022)

  • "The Place of Political Forgiveness in Jus post Bellum," Forgiveness Confronts Race, Relationships, and the Social, edited by Court Lewis, (Vernon Press) 2022: 113-142. (Author, 2022)

  • "Medical Deportation, Non-Citizen Patients, and Nonideal Theory," Applying Nonideal Theory to Bioethics: Living and Dying in a Nonideal World, edited by Elizabeth Victor and Laura Guidry-Grimes (Springer Press), 2021: 357-374. (Author, 2021)

  • "The Equifax Hack" in Business Ethics in Focus, ed. by Alex Sager and Fritz Allhoff, Broadview Press (Author, 2020)

  • "Is There an Obligation to Abort? Act-Utilitarianism and the Ethics of Procreation" in Essays in Philosophy (Author, 2019)

  • "Liability to Deadly Force in War" in Who Should Die? ed. by B.J. Strawser et al., Oxford University Press (Author, 2017)
  • "Robophobia: Moral Limits on the Use of Military Robots" in Robot Ethics 2.0, ed. Patrick Lin et al., Oxford University Press (Author, 2017)
  • “Third-Party Forgiveness” in The Philosophy of Forgiveness, ed. Court Lewis, Vernon Press (Author, 2016)
  • "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill, Broadview Press (Editor, 2015), 
  • Consequentialism and Environmental Ethics, Routledge Press (Co-editor with Avram Hiller and Ramona Ilea, 2013)
  • "Just Cause and Cyber-Attacks," in The Routledge Handbook of Ethics and Wars: Just War in the 21st Century, eds. Fritz Allhoff et al., Routledge Press (Author, 2013)
  • "Rule Consequentialism and Disaster" in Philosophical Studies (Author, 2013)
  • Mill on Justice, Palgrave Macmillan Press (Editor, 2012)
  • “Rule Consequentialism and Scope” in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice (Author, 2012)