Boston College
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2016
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Aesthetics
Continental Philosophy
  •  8
    The Lily's Tongue offers a nuanced, sustained reading of what Maughan-Brown calls the "Lily Discourses"--four discourses that Kierkegaard wrote about the instruction in the Gospel of Matthew to "consider the lilies." Kierkegaard suggests that the lilies are "authoritative" rather than merely "figural" or "metaphorical." The aim of this book is to explore what exactly Kierkegaard means by asking, How do texts speak with authority? In Maughan-Brown's reading, Kierkegaard argues that the key to a t…Read more
  •  7
    Without Authority: Kierkegaard’s Resistance to Patriarchy
    Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 26 (1): 301-323. 2021.
    The phrase, “Without Authority,” is used so frequently by Kierkegaard that it becomes a kind of signature; yet it remains little understood. I argue that the phrase works to resist patriarchal, top-down, institutionally sanctioned authority: the authority of “direct” communication. Kierkegaard is not alone in contesting the tyranny of patriarchy: another tyranny—of anonymity, of the crowd—threatens to do away with patriarchal authority too, and with it all authority, all communication. Kierkegaa…Read more
  •  15
    Kissing the image: an allegory of imagination in ‘The Seducer’s Diary’
    History of European Ideas 47 (3): 528-542. 2021.
    ABSTRACT ‘The Seducer’s Diary’ is not a nostalgic account of a Romantic seducer-figure, and it does not represent the ‘ethical’ rejection of such Romanticism. Instead, it portrays the violence involved just as much in conventional bourgeois marriage as in works of erotic fantasy, and it reveals the necessary failure of both these projects. Although the suffering they may cause is real enough, they never manage to achieve the mastery they seek to impose. At the same time, this radical cultural cr…Read more
  •  7
    Job’s Suffering
    Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2011 (2011): 365-382. 2011.