J.P. Messina

J.P. Messina is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Freedom Project.  He received his PhD in philosophy in 2018 from the University of California, San Diego. His research derives considerable inspiration from the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and is thematically organized around questions concerning the significance and development of notions of freedom across metaphysical, moral, and political domains. He joins the Wellesley College community as a postdoctoral research fellow with the Freedom Project in the Fall of 2018 after having spent a year in Frankfurt, Germany on a fellowship with the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

During this fellowship year, he completed a project on Kant's political philosophy and its treatment of the tension between human freedom and human rights. On the one hand, rights enable freedom: If someone has a right to something, then (on many analyses), she is free to use it in pursuit of her goals, even if it could be more effectively used by someone else. On the other hand, rights restrict freedom: if someone has a right to something, then (on many analyses), others have a duty (often a coercible duty) to refrain from interfering with her use of that thing. Messina argues that this tension between freedom and rights forms the foundation of Kant's political theory, and shows that understanding this sheds light not only on Kant's status as a systematic philosopher, but also on several issues of moment in contemporary political theory.