Michael Garnett received his BA and MPhil in philosophy from Cambridge University and his PhD from the University of Toronto. After a brief stint as a College Lecturer at Wadham College, Oxford, he lectured in philosophy at Birkbeck College until joining King’s in 2023.

 Research interests and PhD supervision

Michael is interested in a variety of issues related to freedom and autonomy, including coercion, manipulation, indoctrination, ideology, oppression and domination. Recent papers concern the relationship between agency and psychological freedom, the nature of coercion, the difference between nonprevention and noncoercion conceptions of negative liberty, and the history of positive conceptions of liberty. He is currently writing a book on the nature of psychological freedom.

Selected publications

Garnett, Michael. 2022. ‘Ghost-Written Lives: Autonomy, Deference, and Self-Authorship’, Ethics 133 (2): 189–215.

Garnett, Michael. 2022. ‘Prevention, Coercion, and Two Concepts of Negative Liberty’, in Mark McBride & Visa A. J. Kurki (eds.), Without Trimmings: The Legal, Moral, and Political Philosophy of Matthew Kramer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 223-238.

Garnett, Michael. 2021. ‘Unity and Disunity in the Positive Tradition’, in John Philip Christman (ed.), Positive Freedom: Past, Present, and Future. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 8-27.

Garnett, Michael. 2018. ‘Coercion: The Wrong and the Bad’, Ethics 128 (3): 545-573.

Garnett, Michael. 2017. ‘Agency and Inner Freedom’, Noûs 51 (1):3-23.