Professor Paul Billingham

Background

I came to Magdalen in 2018 from Christ Church, Oxford, where I was a Junior Research Fellow from 2015-2018. Prior to this, I studied for my BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Queen’s College, Oxford, my MPhil in Politics: Political Theory at Lincoln College, Oxford, and my DPhil in Political Theory at St Anne’s College, Oxford.

Teaching

I teach various courses in political theory, including Introduction to the Theory of Politics (first year paper), Theory of Politics (finals paper), and the Advanced Paper in Theories of Justice (finals paper). At the graduate level, I teach on the MPhil in Politics (Political Theory), as well as supervising DPhil students.

Research

Much of my research has been on debates concerning public justification and public reason: what kinds of reasons or values should be used to justify political institutions and laws, in the face of our many moral, philosophical, and religious disagreements? I have explored competing accounts of public justification and examined the implications of theories of public reason for religious citizens, and the compatibility of the view with Christianity, in particular. This has included interacting with the work of theologians.

This connects to a broader interest in the interactions between religion and politics. Questions here include: What place, if any, do religious political arguments have within democratic deliberation? When, if ever, should religious individuals enjoy exemptions from otherwise applicable laws and rules? Should the law protect the autonomy of religious groups, including by granting them exemptions, even when this allows them to engage in illiberal or inegalitarian practices? Should the liberal state actively confront, and seek to transform, the views of religious citizens whose beliefs and practices do not seem to cohere with liberal values? I have written extensively about each of these questions.

Finally, I also write about the morality of public shaming, especially shaming carried out online. Under what conditions, if any, can this practice be justified? And what are the responsibilities of the state, social media organisations, and the public, in response to cases of unjustified or wrongful shaming? I am currently co-authoring a book on this topic, under contract with Oxford University Press.

Selected Publications

The list below highlights a range of papers addressing the various topics mentioned above. For a full list of publications (and downloadable versions) see https://paulbillingham.weebly.com/publications–working-papers.html.

Does Faith Belong in Politics?: A Debate (Routledge, 2026). (Debating with Marilie Coetsee.)

‘What Public Reason Liberals Do and Do Not Need to Say About Epistemology’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 107(1) (2026): 43–56.

‘Online Public Shaming, the Duties of Social Media Platforms, and the Case for Regulation’, Philosophy & Technology, 39(1) (2026): article 24. (Co-authored with Tom Parr.)

‘Can Civic Friendship Ground Public Reason?’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 74(1) (2024): 24–45. (Co-authored with Anthony Taylor.)

‘Religious Political Arguments, Accessibility, and Democratic Deliberation’, Notre Dame Law Review, 98(4) (2023): 1595–1621.

‘A Framework for Analyzing Public Reason Theories’, European Journal of Political Theory, 21(4) (2022): 671­–691. (Co-authored with Anthony Taylor.)

‘Can Christians Join the Overlapping Consensus? Prospects and Pitfalls for a Christian Justification of Political Liberalism’, Social Theory and Practice, 47(3) (2021): 519-547.

‘Enforcing Social Norms: The Morality of Public Shaming’, European Journal of Philosophy, 28(4) (2020): 997-1016. (Co-authored with Tom Parr.)

‘The Scope of Religious Group Autonomy: Varieties of Judicial Examination of Church Employment Decisions’, Legal Theory, 25(4) (2019): 244-271.

‘How Should Claims for Religious Exemptions be Weighed?’, Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, 6(1) (2017): 1-23.