Oxford, Mississippi, United States of America
  •  9
    Rethinking Spontaneism: Rosa Luxemburg, Skilful Expertise, and the Politics of Habit
    Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 55 (1): 12-27. 2023.
    Rosa Luxemburg defended a view of spontaneism as a way of according strategic priority to popular initiatives over the directives of vanguard parties. But she never worked out a theory of spontaneism, and consequently it has typically been dismissed as lacking solid grounds. In this paper, I take an initial step toward rehabilitating spontaneism by rethinking its assumptions concerning historical agency in embodied habitual terms. After first outlining Luxemburg’s view of spontaneism itself, I c…Read more
  •  14
    Critical Phenomenology and the Mythopoetics of Nature
    Journal of Speculative Philosophy 37 (3): 381-392. 2023.
    ABSTRACT The idea of “critical phenomenology” is premised on the belief that there is a radically critical political impetus intrinsic to phenomenology as such. This belief is sound, but its grounds are unclear. This article clarifies the sense of critical phenomenology by showing how it is based in the methodological need for a generative apprehension of nature as the outermost horizon of experience, that this horizon is pregiven in the mythic Urdoxa of the lifeworld, and that critical phenomen…Read more
  •  6
    In this essay, I consider the significance of Daniel Bensaïd’s work on Jeanne d’Arc with regard to dealing with the “difficult times” in which we live. (1) I first consider some of the background in early critical theory in order to show that Bensaïd’s aim to recover Benjamin’s notion of a “weak messianic power” requires following through with Horkheimer and Adorno’s critique of enlightenment, and that this implies a critical rehabilitation of myth and mythopoesis. (2) Approaching Bensaïd’s acco…Read more
  •  5
    Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception - a canonical text of twentieth-century philosophy - concludes with an appeal to 'heroism' by citing a series of enigmatic sentences drawn from Saint-Exupe;ry's Pilote de guerre. Surprisingly, however, these lines are antithetical to the philosophical thrust of Merleau-Ponty's project. This book aims to explain this situation. Foregrounding liminal themes in Merleau-Ponty's thought that have been largely overlooked - e.g., sacrifice, death, myth, faith…Read more
  •  8
    Mythopoetic naturalization
    Metodo. International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy 9 (2): 469-500. 2021.
    This paper sketches a new approach to the critical-theoretic problem of reification understood as a normatively problematic form of naturalizing or dehistoricizing entifcation. Entifcation in general is approached phenomenologically in terms of the mythic outer horizonality of the lifeworld, and reification is shown to stem from the dichotomy between nature and history which, along with a corresponding dichotomy between myth and reason, is characteristic of Enlightenment rationality. Dereificati…Read more
  •  1
    Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology by David Morris
    Review of Metaphysics 73 (4): 852-854. 2020.
  •  7
    This volume examines various points of contact between Marxism and phenomenology. Although these traditions can appear conceptually incompatible, the contributors reveal productive complementarities on themes such as alienation, reification, and ecology, which illuminate and can help to resolve the crises of contemporary capitalism.
  •  13
    Problems of Yesterday and Today
    Chiasmi International 22 41-49. 2020.
  •  20
    De-Moralizing Heroism
    Southwest Philosophy Review 36 (1): 65-74. 2020.
    Agents’ self-reports in cases of reactive heroism often deny the optionality, and hence the supererogatory status, of their actions, while conversely supporting a view of these actions in terms of nonselfsacrificial existential necessity. Taking such claims seriously thus makes it puzzling as to why such cases elicit strong approbation. To resolve this puzzle, I show how this necessity can be understood in the predispositional embodied terms of unreflective ethical expertise, such that the agent…Read more
  •  6
    Merleau-Ponty and the Art of Perception (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 72 (1): 130-132. 2018.
  •  32
    Most self-reports of heroic action in both reactive and social (proactive) cases describe the experience as involving a kind of necessity. This seems intuitively sound, but it makes it unclear why heroism is accorded strong approbation. To resolve this, I show that the necessity involved in heroism is a nonselfsacrificial practical necessity. (1) Approaching the intentional structure of human action from the perspective of embodiment, focusing especially on the predispositionality of pre-reflect…Read more
  •  47
    Desire and Distance
    Symposium 11 (1): 188-193. 2007.
  •  37
    Résumé: Sur la fausseté de fa “fausse conscience”
    Chiasmi International 9 145-145. 2007.
  •  6
    Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology (review)
    Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale 12 (2): 186-195. 2008.
  •  44
    Merleau-Ponty and the “Naturalization” of Phenomenology
    Philosophy Today 54 (Supplement): 153-162. 2010.
  •  54
    Foucault and Binswanger
    Philosophy Today 55 (Supplement): 92-101. 2011.
  •  41
  •  40
    On the Falseness of “False Consciousness”
    Chiasmi International 9 131-144. 2007.
  •  47
    Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology
    Symposium 12 (2): 186-195. 2008.
  •  8
    Desire and Distance: Introduction to a Phenomenology of Perception (review)
    Symposium 11 (1): 188-193. 2007.
  • Taylor Carmau, Merleau-Ponty (review)
    Philosophy in Review 29 (3): 161-163. 2009.
  •  28
    Merleau-Ponty and the Generation of Animals
    PhaenEx 2 (2): 170-215. 2007.
    Merleau-Ponty recognized that phenomenology's methodological coherence required that it reject anthropocentricity and extend its scope beyond the human realm. But he also recognized that this does not change the central role played by human consciousness in phenomenology, which he thus construed as a practical, humanistic project based on 'ontological faith'. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological contributions concerning animals, then, and in particular his notion of 'interanimality', need to be unde…Read more
  •  357
    Generating Sense
    Schutzian Research 3 (n/a): 121-132. 2011.
    The aim of phenomenology is to provide a critical account of the origins and genesis of the world. This implies that the standpoint of the phenomenologicalreduction is properly extramundane. But it remains an outstanding task to formulate a credible account of the reduction that would be adequate to this seemingly impossible methodological condition. This paper contributes to rethinking the reduction accordingly. Building on efforts to thematize its intersubjective and corporeal aspects, the red…Read more
  •  6
    The Things Themselves: Phenomenology and the Return to the Everyday (review)
    Symposium 11 (2): 468-471. 2007.