Sharam Kohan

Biography

Sharam Kohan is the author of Sartre's Conception of Freedom. In this revised and expanded second edition, he extends the original study beyond Being and Nothingness to Sartre's later social philosophy and develops the book's account of situated and distributive answerability.

His writing runs along two lines that meet in this book. The first is philosophical: the structure of judgment, the conditions of agency, and what a defensible account of freedom can and cannot support. The second concerns institutions: how organizations distribute knowledge, authority, and cost, and what follows for the responsibility of the people inside them. The theory of distributive answerability developed in Chapters Seven and Eight is where the two lines converge.

That second line is not only theoretical. He has served as a Human Relations Commissioner in Alameda County, California, in a district covering parts of Oakland, Emeryville, and Berkeley; has held volunteer leadership on nonprofit boards; and supports charitable causes through personal philanthropy. The organizations he has worked with serve disadvantaged and disenfranchised communities, including people who are unhoused, in the San Francisco Bay Area, Philadelphia, and Boston. The account of institutional answerability in Chapters Seven and Eight was not written from outside institutions.

The second edition was completed in November 2023. It positions the continuity thesis against the nearest scholarship then available, and tests the resulting responsibility framework against disputes concerning many hands, manipulation, culpable ignorance, structural injustice, and standing to blame.