•  612
    Readings of “Consciousness”: Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
    with Agemir Bavaresco, Andrew J. Latham, and Thomas Raysmith
    Journal of General Philosophy 1 (1): 15-26. 2014.
    This paper walks through four different approaches to Hegel's notion of Consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Through taking four different approaches our aim is to explore the multifaceted nature of the phenomenological movement of consciousness. The first part provides an overview of the three chapters of the section on Consciousness, namely Sense-Certainty, Perception and Force and the Understanding, attempting to unearth the implicit logic that undergirds Consciousness’ experience. T…Read more
  •  67
    Two directions for teleology: naturalism and idealism
    Synthese 195 (7): 3097-3119. 2018.
    Philosophers of biology claim that function talk is consistent with naturalism. Yet recent work in biology places new pressure on this claim. An increasing number of biologists propose that the existence of functions depends on the organisation of systems. While systems are part of the domain studied by physics, they are capable of interacting with this domain through organising principles. This is to say that a full account of biological function requires teleology. Does naturalism preclude ref…Read more
  •  45
    Systematicity in Kant’s Third Critique
    Idealistic Studies 48 (1): 25-46. 2018.
    Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment is often interpreted in light of its initial reception. Conventionally, this reception is examined in the work of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, who found in Kant’s third Critique a new task for philosophy: the construction of an absolute, self-grounding system. This paper identifies an alternative line of reception in the work of physiologists and medical practitioners during the 1790s and early 1800s, including Kielmeyer, Reil, Girtanner and Oken. It argu…Read more
  •  40
    Philosophy's Tragedy
    Metaphilosophy 47 (1): 59-74. 2016.
    Is tragedy, as Nietzsche declared, dead? In recent years many philosophers have reconsidered tragedy's relation to philosophy. While tragedy is deemed to contain important lessons for philosophy, there is a consensus that it remains a thing of the past. This article calls this consensus into question, arguing that it reifies tragedy, keeping tragedy at arm's length. With the interest of identifying the necessity of tragedy to philosophy, it draws from Quentin Skinner to put forward an alternativ…Read more
  •  35
    Kants Theorie der Biologie: Ein Kommentar. Eine Lesart. Eine Historische Einordnung (review)
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26 (3): 625-630. 2018.
  •  33
    The Role of Empathy and Life Satisfaction in Internet and Smartphone Use Disorder
    with Bernd Lachmann, Cornelia Sindermann, Rayna Y. Sariyska, Ruixue Luo, Martin C. Melchers, Benjamin Becker, and Christian Montag
    Frontiers in Psychology 9. 2018.
  •  33
    The Representation of an Action: Tragedy between Kant and Hegel
    European Journal of Philosophy 24 (4): 573-594. 2016.
    Hegel's theory of tragedy has polarized critics. In the past, many philosophers have claimed that Hegel's theory of tragedy removes Kant's critical insights and returns to pre-critical metaphysics. More recently, several have argued that Hegel does not break faith with tragic experience but allows philosophy to be transformed by tragedy. In this paper I examine the strength of this revised position. First I show that it identifies Hegel's insightful critique of Kant's theoretical assumptions. Ye…Read more
  •  28
    Terry Eagleton, Hope without Optimism (review)
    Philosophy Today 60 (4): 991-994. 2016.
  •  26
    Do Functions Explain? Hegel and the Organizational View
    Hegel Bulletin 41 (3): 389-406. 2020.
    In this paper I return to Hegel's dispute with Kant over the conceptual ordering of external and internal purposiveness to distinguish between two conceptions of teleology at play in the contemporary function debate. I begin by outlining the three main views in the debate (the etiological, causal role and organizational views). I argue that only the organizational view can maintain the capacity of function ascriptions both to explain the presence of a trait and to identify its contribution to a …Read more
  •  24
    Kant and experimental philosophy
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 25 (2): 265-286. 2017.
    While Kant introduces his critical philosophy in continuity with the experimental tradition begun by Francis Bacon, it is widely accepted that his Copernican revolution places experimental physics outside the bounds of science. Yet scholars have recently contested this view. They argue that in Critique of the Power of Judgment Kant’s engagement with the growing influence of vitalism in the 1780s leads to an account of nature’s formative power that returns experimental physics within scientific p…Read more
  •  24
    Hypotheses in Kant's philosophy of science
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 99 (C): 97-105. 2023.
    In this paper I extend the case for a necessitation account of particular laws in Kant's philosophy of science by examining the relation between reason's hypothetical use in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic and the legitimate hypotheses identified in the Doctrine of Method. Building on normative accounts of reason's ideas, I argue that reason's hypothetical use does not describe the connections between objects and their grounds, which lie beyond the reach of the understanding, but me…Read more
  •  24
    The Representation of an Action: Tragedy between Kant and Hegel
    European Journal of Philosophy 25 (3): 573-594. 2017.
    Hegel's theory of tragedy has polarized critics. In the past, many philosophers have claimed that Hegel's theory of tragedy removes Kant's critical insights and returns to pre-critical metaphysics. More recently, several have argued that Hegel does not break faith with tragic experience but allows philosophy to be transformed by tragedy. In this paper I examine the strength of this revised position. First I show that it identifies Hegel's insightful critique of Kant's theoretical assumptions. Ye…Read more
  •  23
    Iris Murdoch on Moral Perception1
    Heythrop Journal 62 (3): 454-466. 2021.
    Many students who sign up for undergraduate‐level philosophy arrive with the expectation that moral philosophy is concerned with how one should act in the concrete and familiar situations of everyday life. Yet moral philosophers are often motivated by an ideal of neutrality, and adopt a detached perspective to achieve a scientific view of the competing moral theories. To concretise the points of disagreement they present highly specific examples that are abstracted from daily reality. There is s…Read more
  •  22
    Kant's universal conception of natural history
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A. forthcoming.
    Scholars often draw attention to the remarkably individual and progressive character of Kant's Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens. What is less often noted, however, is that Kant's project builds on several transformations that occurred in natural science during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Without contextualising Kant's argument within these transformations, the full sense of Kant's achievement remains unseen. This paper situates Kant's essay within the analogical …Read more
  •  22
    Window into chaos
    with Cornelius Castoriadis
    Thesis Eleven 148 (1): 77-88. 2018.
    This is the first English translation of a remarkable two-part lecture given by Cornelius Castoriadis at the École des hautes etudes en sciences sociales in January 1992. The lecture features within a series on social transformation and the task of creative forms of labour. In this installment Castoriadis explores the significance of art through a creative reading of Aristotle's famous definition of tragedy in the Poetics. He rejects Aristotle's dependence on the mimetic tradition in search for …Read more
  •  20
    Unlike many recent studies on the notion of lifestyle, Christopher Mayes’ The Biopolitics of Lifestyle balances theoretical rigour with empirical investigation to problematize the use of lifestyle in public health strategies. Not only does Mayes’ book expose the unjustified emphasis on individual autonomy undergirding neoliberal strategies of governance and contemporary ethical theory, it also marks a significant step forward in enhancing our understanding of one of Foucault’s most underapprecia…Read more
  •  18
    Hypotheses in Kant's philosophy of science
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A. forthcoming.
    In this paper I extend the case for a necessitation account of particular laws in Kant's philosophy of science by examining the relation between reason's hypothetical use in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic and the legitimate hypotheses identified in the Doctrine of Method. Building on normative accounts of reason's ideas, I argue that reason's hypothetical use does not describe the connections between objects and their grounds, which lie beyond the reach of the understanding, but me…Read more
  •  17
    Reading Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft in England, 1796-1840
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 29 (3): 472-493. 2021.
    Most studies deny that Kritik der Urteilskraft played a significant role in the early reception of Kant’s philosophy in England. In this paper, I examine the notebooks, letters and lectures of several members of British medical and scientific institutions to tell a different story. Drawing from the writings of Thomas Beddoes, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Joseph Henry Green and William Whewell, I identify a line of reception in which Kant’s critique of judgement’s power of reflection was used to esta…Read more
  •  15
    Living natural products in Kant's physical geography
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 78 101191. 2019.
    In this paper I propose a new account of living natural products in Kant’s physical geography. I argue that Kant adopts Buffon’s twofold conception of natural history, which consists of a general theory of nature as a physical nexus of causes and a particular account of living natural products in the setting of the earth. Yet in contrast to Buffon, who placed the two parts of natural history on equal epistemic footing, Kant’s physical geography can be understood as a second, pragmatic level of i…Read more
  •  15
    For the (Philosophical) Love of Poetic Beauty
    Philosophical Inquiry 41 (1): 111-126. 2017.
    It is a well-worn trope to view Plato’s banishment of the poets in Republic as a crude form of philistinism. In this paper I defend Plato against this charge. I argue that Republic does not present a final view of poetry, for it leaves room for a philosophical love of poetic beauty. First I analyse the political nature of Plato’s critique of poetry. I suggest that Plato does not reject the political order of change and decay, but opens space for a new kind of political project. I then suggest th…Read more
  •  14
    Simon Critchley, Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us
    Philosophy Today 65 (1): 211-215. 2021.
  •  13
    Kant’s Ongoing Relevance for Philosophy of Science
    with Andrew Jones
    Kantian Review 28 (3): 337-354. 2023.
    In this introductory article we reconstruct several broad developments in the scholarship on Kant’s theory of natural science with a particular focus on the Anglophone context over the past half-century. Our goal is to illuminate the co-development of Kant scholarship and the philosophy of science during this period and to identify points of influence in both directions. In section 2 we present an overview of the scholarship on Kant’s account of natural laws. In section 3 we survey the diverse i…Read more
  •  12
    Coleridge and contemplation (review)
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 27 (1): 231-236. 2019.
  •  9
    Beyond Heidegger: From ontology to action
    Thesis Eleven 140 (1): 90-105. 2017.
    Heidegger’s blatant anti-Semitism in the recently published volumes of the Black Notebooks has led several philosophers to question the future of Heidegger scholarship. In this article I suggest that the publication of the Notebooks indeed provides a deeper understanding of Heidegger’s entanglement with National Socialism. Yet rather than viewing this entanglement as cause to reject his work, I examine how it might help us to define philosophy’s role in the project of building a society in which…Read more
  •  8
    Nature’s Ultimate End
    Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy 24 (48): 31-45. 2016.
    Against the growing trend in philosophy toward naturalistic analysis, Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment has gained significant attention. Some scholars suggest that Kant’s insights bear on our aesthetic appreciation of nature, others on our account of the life sciences. In this paper I draw these lines of inquiry together to identify two overlooked dimensions of Kant’s project: the role of moral hope in problematizing the limits of natural science and the role of culture in providing a so…Read more
  •  7
    This chapter examines Goethe’s notion of the “economy of nature [Ökonomie der Natur]” to argue that his morphological writings play a more extensive role in the formation of evolutionary science than scholars have previously acknowledged. I suggest that Goethe’s economic analogy replaces the Newtonian model of force with an experimental conception of the formative drive, opening a large-scale programme of research. This feature of his work was rightly picked up by his early critics and yet was o…Read more
  •  7
    Kant and Biological Theory
    In Luca Corti & Johannes-Georg Schuelein (eds.), Life, Organisms, and Human Nature: New Perspectives on Classical German Philosophy, Springer Verlag. pp. 21-38. 2023.
    Over the past few decades, philosophers of biology have debated the need for a revised evolutionary synthesis that could integrate the causal dynamics of singular organisms into mainstream biological theory. In this chapter I examine two synthesizing arguments (extension and accretion) by turning to a historical source that has recently caught the attention of philosophers on both sides of the debate: Immanuel Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment. I argue that accretionists and extenders bot…Read more
  •  6
    Judgment, normativity and the subject
    Thesis Eleven 161 (1): 35-50. 2020.
    One of the fundamental questions in post-Fregean philosophy is how to account for the normativity involved in assertoric claims once the traditional subject-object view of thinking is rejected. One of the more productive lines of inquiry in the contemporary literature attributes normativity to second nature, which is presented as a sui generis space of reason giving and receiving distinct from the space of nature studied by the natural sciences. In this paper I suggest an alternative account by …Read more
  •  5
    European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.