Jason Brennan

Jason F. Brennan (born 1979) is an American philosopher and business professor. He is the Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.

Jason Brennan
Brennan in 2013
Born	Jason F. Brennan 1979 (age 46–47)
Education
Alma mater	University of Arizona
Philosophical work
Era	21st-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic Libertarianism Arizona School liberalism
Institutions	Georgetown University
Main interests	Political philosophy · Applied ethics · Democratic theory
Notable ideas	Ethics of voting
Website	jasonfbrennan.com

Brennan writes about democratic theory, the ethics of voting, competence and power, freedom, and the moral foundations of commercial society. His work focuses on the intersection of normative political philosophy and the empirical social sciences, especially on questions about voter behavior, pathologies of democracy, and the consequences of freedom. He argues that most citizens have a moral obligation not to vote.

Early life

Brennan grew up in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, and Hudson, New Hampshire, where he attended Alvirne High School. He attended Case Western Reserve University and the University of New Hampshire as an undergraduate. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Arizona under the direction of David Schmidtz.

From 2006 to 2011, he was a research fellow at the Political Theory Project, and later assistant professor of philosophy at Brown University.

Books

• A Brief History of Liberty, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, with David Schmidtz
• The Ethics of Voting, Princeton University Press, 2011
• Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know, Oxford University Press, 2012
• Compulsory Voting: For and Against, Cambridge University Press, 2014, with Lisa Hill
• Why Not Capitalism?, Routledge, 2014
• Markets without Limits, Routledge, 2015, with Peter Jaworski
• Political Philosophy: An Introduction, Cato Institute, 2016
• Against Democracy, Princeton University Press, 2016
• In Defense of Openness: Why Global Freedom Is the Humane Solution to Global Poverty, Oxford University Press, 2018, with Bas van der Vossen
• When All Else Fails: The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice, Princeton University Press, 2018
• Cracks in the Ivory Tower, Oxford University Press, 2019, with Phil Magness
• Injustice for All. How Financial Incentives Corrupted and Can Fix the US Criminal Justice System, Routledge, 2019, with Chris W. Surprenant
• Good Work If You Can Get It: How to Succeed in Academia, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020
• Why It's OK to Want to Be Rich, Routledge, 2020
• Business Ethics for Better Behavior, Oxford University Press, 2021, with William English, John Hasnas and Peter Jaworski
• Debating Democracy, Oxford University Press, 2021, with Hélène Landemore
• Democracy: A Guided Tour, Oxford University Press, 2023
• Questioning Beneficence, Routledge Press, 2024, with Samuel Arnold, Richard Yetter Chappell, and Ryan Davis
• Debating Libertarianism, Oxford University Press, 2025, with Samuel Freeman
• Debating Capitalism, Oxford University Press, 2026, with Richard Arneson
• Glass Houses: Choosing Grace in a Judgmental World, Oxford University Press, 2026
• Libertarianism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2027

Book chapters

• Brennan, Jason; van der Vossen, Bas (2018). "Part II: Questioning Libertarian Principals; Ch. 14: The Myths of the Self-Ownership Thesis". In Brennan, Jason; van der Vossen, Bas; Schmidtz, David (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Libertarianism. London and New York: Taylor & Francis Group. pp. 199–211. ISBN 978-0367870591.

See also

• American philosophy

External links

• Jason Brennan's faculty page
• Bleeding Heart Libertarians – blog
• 200-Proof Liberals – blog
• "On the ethics of voting" (interview with Jason Brennan), 3:AM Magazine, January 14, 2013
• Appearances on C-SPAN