James S. Pearson

My guiding aim is to explore how we can maximise human flourishing. In much of my work, I try to show how such flourishing is best achieved through an inclusive and realistic form of social democracy, one in which digital technologies are effectively regulated. I focus on what I call the three Cs of collective flourishing: conflict, crises, and creativity.

Conflict: I have authored multiple articles on the importance of conflict for democratic flourishing. My book Nietzsche on Conflict, Struggle and War (Cambridge University Press, 2022) examines how Nietzsche regards non-violent contention as essential for social cohesion and vitality, and further highlights how his views can be used to challenge prevailing theories of conflict in democratic theory. Across multiple articles, I have similarly examined how Rawls, Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Lyotard each conceive of contention as a key source of democratic flourishing.

Crises: This strand of my work concentrates more exclusively on contemporary democratic theory and political epistemology. Its guiding aim is to establish how democracies can survive crises without forfeiting their democratic credentials. Are democratic governments permitted to alarm or deceive their citizens in order to motivate beneficial collective action? Correspondingly, I also ask whether citizens are always justified in critiquing government policy under conditions of crisis. This work extends to research on specific crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis, though I am primarily interested in the challenges that digital technologies pose for democracies. If we want social democracies to thrive and survive, I argue that we need to learn to harness these technologies in ways that enhance democratic participation.

Creativity: My research project at the University of Lisbon examines the social value of creativity, exploring how it can boost learning and generate a range of broader social benefits. I am currently interested in how developments in artificial intelligence are reshaping how we think about creativity. As part of this work, I have been collaborating with experimental psychologists at the University of Amsterdam to investigate how the particular conception of creativity that individuals work with influences their perception of AI-generated outputs.

I received my PhD in Philosophy (cum laude) from Leiden University. Prior to this, I earned my MA (with distinction) from the University of Warwick, and my undergraduate MA (with first-class honours) from the University of Dundee.

I have also been a visiting scholar in Philosophy at the University of Oxford (2012) and in Political Science at Stanford University (2024).

Since 2023, I've been working at the University of Amsterdam as a Postdoctoral Researcher in Political Science. This position is funded by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie European Fellowship.

In 2022, I began a 6-year research position at the Centre of Philosophy at the University of Lisbon (CFUL). This position has been suspended for the duration of my fellowship at the University of Amsterdam.

Between 2019 and 2022, I worked as a Postdoc in Practical Philosophy at the University of Tartu (Estonia). This was part of an individual research project on multicultural disagreement (funded by the European Commission).

From 2017 to 2019, I worked as a Lecturer in Philosophy at Leiden University. 

My PhD (2012–2017) at Leiden University was fully funded by the NWO (Dutch Research Council) as part of the research programme "Between Deliberation and Agonism: Rethinking Conflict and its Relation to Law in Political Philosophy."