SHNAYDERMAN, Ronen

Max Weber Fellow 2010-2011

Email Ronen.Shnayderman@eui.eu 
Tel. [+39] 055 4685 744 
Office VF32

European University Institute
Max Weber Programme
Via delle Fontanelle 10
I-50014 San Domenico

Departmental affiliation: Political and Social Sciences  / Law 
Mentor: Dennis Patterson 

 

 

My research interests are in contemporary political philosophy, and particularly in the concept of individual freedom: its meaning, value, and measurement.

My Ph.D. thesis, ‘Freedom, Persons, and External Resources’ (to be submitted to the University of Oxford), attempts to answer the question of which distribution of property rights is most congenial to individual freedom.

It consists of a conceptual analysis of the concept of individual freedom, of what it means to be free (and unfree) to do a specific thing, and of how to measure how much overall individual freedom a person has in virtue of the specific freedoms (and unfreedoms) s/he possesses; this is then applied to the question of which distribution of property rights within a given society would maximize its members’ individual freedom. During my time as a Max Weber Fellow I shall continue to work on these issues.

I hold a B.A. in Political Science & Philosophy and an M.A. in Philosophy, both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. During my M.A. studies in Jerusalem I was also working as a researcher for an Israeli Human Rights organization: B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. While in Oxford I have been teaching contemporary political philosophy for the Oxford Programme for Undergraduate Studies.