Martin O’Neill is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of York.
He works on a variety of topics in moral and political philosophy. In recent years he has been especially interested in freedom, autonomy and responsibility; social justice; equality and inequality; and various issues at the intersection of political philosophy, political economy and public policy, including taxation, monetary policy, finance and money, corporations and economic governance, work and labour unions.
Martin is Commissioning Editor of Renewal: a Journal of Social Democracy.
Martin moved across to the Department of Philosophy in 2018, having taught in the Department of Politics at York since 2010. Before that, he was Hallsworth Research Fellow in Political Economy at the University of Manchester (2007-2009), and, before that, Research Fellow in Philosophy and Politics at St John's College, University of Cambridge (2004-2007). He did his PhD in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University, supervised by T. M. Scanlon and Derek Parfit. During his time at Harvard he also spent time as a Graduate Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra University Center for Ethics, and as a Graduate Fellow in the interdisciplinary Project on Justice, Welfare and Economics. Before that he did a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), and later the B.Phil in Philosophy, both at Balliol College, University of Oxford.
His research interests in more detail are:
- Political philosophy, especially equality, liberty, responsibility and social justice.
- Issues at the intersection of political philosophy and public policy (especially taxation, welfare policy, monetary policy, corporate regulation, labour unions, banking and financial regulation).
- The political philosophy of John Rawls; and recent liberal and left political philosophy, especially the work of philosophers such as Anderson, Barry, G. A. Cohen, J. Cohen, Nagel, Scanlon, Scheffler, and Young.
- The politics of social justice; progressive political thought; the political philosophy of political economy; global and intergenerational justice.
- Free will; moral responsibility; personal identity.