I am an Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department as well as the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University in Orange County, California. I am also an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at Monash University. From 2014-2018, I was a Lecturer (Assistant Professor with tenure) in Philosophy at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. I am also the Director of the Law & Liberal Arts Minor at Chapman University.

I specialize in political philosophy, normative ethics, and decision/game theory and its applications to ethics and political philosophy. My research focuses on the relation of individual practical rationality to social rules as well as the way those rules are organized into systems of norms and institutions. I am especially interested in how recent work in moral psychology and experimental economics can inform our understanding of how to improve our institutions of self-governance.

I am the author, with Dan Halliday, of The Ethics of Capitalism (Oxford University Press, 2020). There is also a companion website EthicsofCapitalism.com, which has online-only bonus chapters, additional readings, and sample course syllabi. The first chapter is available here. 

I am also the author of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics: An Introduction  (Princeton University Press, 2021). This work is co-authored with the late Jerry Gaus.

I am currently working on a book that develops and defends the idea of the dynamic society as a competitor to traditional theories of liberalism as well as to its solidaristic alternatives (e.g., populism, nationalism, communitarianism). This book draws on some of my recent work on the open society which can be found here.

I have been working with my colleague Toby Handfield in philosophy and several collaborators in Economics including Lata Gangadharan, Klaus Abbink, and Erte Xiao on how “bad norms,” such as norms of anti-social punishment and honor codes develop stabilize, and change. Other collaborators include Chris Freiman, Gerald Gaus, Julian Garcia, Keith Hankin, Shaun Nichols, David Schmidtz, and Kevin Vallier.

My work has been published in

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, The American Journal of Political Science, Nature Communications, Philosophical Studies, The Journal of Politics, Synthese, Human Nature, The Journal of Moral Philosophy, Political Studies, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Biology & Philosophy, Social Philosophy & Policy, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, The European Journal of Philosophy, The Adam Smith Review, and several edited volumes. Most of my recent publications can be found here. 

You can contact me at Thrasheriv<at>chapman.edu