Department of Philosophy: People: Core Faculty: Samuel Kerstein

Samuel Kerstein (PhD, Columbia), Associate Professor of Philosophy. His main interests lie in ethical theory, bioethics, and the history of philosophy. In several articles and a book, Kant’s Search for the Supreme Principle of Morality, he has examined the foundations of Kantian ethics. As a fellow in the Program in Ethics and Health at Harvard University (2006-2008), he is working on an elaboration and defense of the Kantian principle that persons must never be treated merely as means, but always as ends in themselves. Reflection on issues in medical ethics such as proper uses of clinical data and the moral permissibility of offers to purchase organs for transplantation informs Kerstein’s efforts to reconstruct this principle. He is also investigating the principle’s implications for issues such as the moral permissibility of abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and physician-assisted dying.

E-mail: kerstein@umd.edu

Personal Home Page: http://www.philosophy.umd.edu/Faculty/SKerstein/

Representative Publications

Kant’s Search for the Supreme Principle of Morality, (Cambridge 2002 [paperback 2005]).

"Treating Oneself Merely as a Means." In Kant's Virtue Ethics, Monika Betzlerm, ed. (Berlin: de Gruyter), forthcoming.

"Reason, Sentiment, and Categorical Imperatives." In Contemporary Debates in Moral Theory, James Dreier, ed. (Oxford: Blackwell), 2006, 129-143.

"Korsgaard's Kantian Arguments for the Value of Humanity," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 31 (2001): 23-52.