Professor Jacobson works on a range of topics in ethics and moral psychology, especially issues concerning sentimentalism, and the moral and political philosophy of J.S. Mill. He has also published in aesthetics and political philosophy, and has ongoing research interests in those fields. Professor Jacobson is currently working on the Mill volume for the Routledge Philosophers Series, as well as a collaborative book project, Rational Sentimentalism, with Professor Justin D’Arms (Ohio State) for Oxford University Press. He has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, and the University Center for Human Values, Princeton.

Professor Jacobson is on leave Fall 2009

“Utilitarianism Without Consequentialism: The Case of John Stuart Mill,” The Philosophical Review 117 (2008): 159-191.

“Seeing by Feeling: Virtues, Skills, and Moral Perception,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 8 (2005): 387-409.

“The Significance of Recalcitrant Emotions (or, Anti-Quasijudgmentalism),” Philosophy 52 (2003): 127-45. Co-authored with Justin D’Arms.

“The Moralistic Fallacy: On the ‘Appropriateness’ of Emotions,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (2000): 65-90. Co-authored with Justin D’Arms.

“Mill on Liberty, Speech, and the Free Society,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 29 (2000): 276-309.

“In Praise of Immoral Art,” Philosophical Topics 25 (1997): 155-99.