I’m a Postdoctoral Junior Research Fellow in Philosophy at Corpus Christi College, the University of Cambridge. I graduated from the University of Chicago in Summer 2017 with a joint degree PhD from the Committee on Social Thought and the Philosophy Department.
My research interests lie at the intersection of contemporary moral philosophy (metaethics and moral psychology) and the history of moral philosophy, especially Kant and post-Kantian German Idealism (but also Aristotle and Heidegger). The central question guiding my research is how to best to understand the nature of our dependence on conditions that lie beyond our individual rational control and choice--our emotions, our character and other persons. My aim is to show that these forms of dependence and receptivity are not restrictions on human freedom but are rather the conditions for its realization. Freedom on this account is not the freedom to exercise control over errant emotions, dispositions of character, or satisfy one's desires unhindered, but the freedom from having to expand one's efforts in this way.
Before coming to the University of Chicago, I studied English literature at Harvard; I remain interested in the relationship between philosophy, literature and psychoanalysis.
I also write for a non-academic audience, and am an editor of The Point, a quarterly non-fiction literary magazine which publishes philosophical essays on politics, contemporary life, and culture (see more under "Essays").
My research interests lie at the intersection of contemporary moral philosophy (metaethics and moral psychology) and the history of moral philosophy, especially Kant and post-Kantian German Idealism (but also Aristotle and Heidegger). The central question guiding my research is how to best to understand the nature of our dependence on conditions that lie beyond our individual rational control and choice--our emotions, our character and other persons. My aim is to show that these forms of dependence and receptivity are not restrictions on human freedom but are rather the conditions for its realization. Freedom on this account is not the freedom to exercise control over errant emotions, dispositions of character, or satisfy one's desires unhindered, but the freedom from having to expand one's efforts in this way.
Before coming to the University of Chicago, I studied English literature at Harvard; I remain interested in the relationship between philosophy, literature and psychoanalysis.
I also write for a non-academic audience, and am an editor of The Point, a quarterly non-fiction literary magazine which publishes philosophical essays on politics, contemporary life, and culture (see more under "Essays").