Keith Hankins is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Political Economy in the Hamilton School. His research focuses on the institutions, norms, and psychological dispositions that allow individuals to navigate the frictions associated with living in community with others so that they can reap the benefits of social cooperation. Much of his work uses formal models to shed light on how these mechanisms work, while a distinct but sometimes overlapping strand explores how the work of historical figures like Adam Smith and David Hume bear on contemporary debates about these issues. His work has been published in journals including the Journal of Politics, Ethics, Economics and Philosophy, and PLoS One, as well as in numerous edited volumes. He is also currently the PPE section editor for Philosophy Compass and the Secretary-Treasurer of the International Adam Smith Society. Prior to coming to Hamilton he was the R.C. Hoiles Endowed Chair in Business Ethics and Free Enterprise at Chapman University where he was also Associate Professor of Philosophy and a founding member of the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy, and prior to that he was a Research Fellow at Ormond College and the Centre for Ethical Leadership at the University of Melbourne.
Keith is currently working on two book projects. The first develops the theoretical and practical upshots of the account of associative responsibility he previously introduced in a pair of articles to help makes sense of cases where we hold individuals to be blameworthy for accidents for which they are not culpable. The second is a collaborative project, again building on previously published work, that will develop a novel set of computational models for exploring the role that ideals play in orienting the pursuit of social progress in a world shaped by epistemic constraints and obstacles of other sorts.
“Pursuing Social Progress: The Question of Orientation,” with Ryan Muldoon and David Wiens, Economics & Philosophy, forthcoming
“Associative Responsibility and the Possibility of Blameworthiness Without Culpability,” Social Theory and Practice, 51(3), 2025, 351 – 386
“Does (mis)communication mitigate the upshot of diversity?“ with Ryan Muldoon and Alex Schaefer, PLoS One, 18(3): e0283248, 2023
“Adam Smith and the Creative Role of Imagination,” with Brennan McDavid, in Alberto Burgio (ed.) Adam Smith and Modernity: 1723 – 2023,
Routledge, 2023
“Hume’s Politics and Four Dimensions of Realism,” with John Thrasher, Journal of Politics, 84 (2), 2022
“Smithian Sympathy and the Emergence of Norms,” with John Thrasher, Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, 2021
“Game Theory and Ethics,” with Peter Vanderschraff, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2021
“Positional Goods and Upstream Agency” with Daniel Halliday, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 98 (2), 2020, 279 – 293
“Searching for the Ideal: The Fundamental Diversity Dilemma” with Jerry Gaus, in Kevin Vallier and Michael Weber (eds.) Political
Utopias. Oxford University Press, 2017.
“Adam Smith’s Intriguing Solution to the Problem of Moral Luck,” Ethics, 126 (3), 2016, 711 – 746
“When Justice Demands Inequality” with John Thrasher, Journal of Moral Philosophy, 12 (2), 2015, 172 – 194
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