•  608
    What is the difference between knowing someone and acknowledging them? Is it possible to want to be acknowledged while remaining unknown? And if one’s desire to know another person is too consuming, can this foreclose the possibility of acknowledgment? Cavell argues that we sometimes avoid the ethical problem of acknowledgment by (mis)conceiving our relations with others in terms of knowledge and that this epistemic misconception can actually amount to a form of ethical harm. I show that Polansk…Read more
  •  217
    "How Shall We Put Ourselves in Touch with Reality?" On Baldwin, Film, and Acknowledgment
    Social Research: An International Quarterly 87 (4): 991-1021. 2020.
    What might film’s contribution be to the work of acknowledgment, apology, and moral repair? James Baldwin's 1976 book on film, The Devil Finds Work, can be read as a reflection on the role that film might play in the extensive, multi-dimensional, public task of, as he puts it, putting ourselves in touch with reality, specifically the reality of American racism as an integral to American reality, its past and present. Developing Baldwin's thought, this paper outlines two broad types of cinematic …Read more
  •  216
    [please see my website for the English language version] What is the relationship between a philosophical or theoretical conception of mind, and the mind’s conception of itself? Should the latter constrain the former? And how does the mind itself understand a theory of mind, that is, a theory of itself? I raise these questions by means of Freud. Freud suggested that the mind cannot merely theoretically comprehend psychoanalytic concepts but must be able to “recognize” and “sympathize” with t…Read more
  •  133
    Robert Pippin. "Douglas Sirk: Filmmaker and Philosopher" (review)
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 80 (2): 252-255. 2022.
  •  118
    Kant's Fantasy
    Mind. forthcoming.
    Throughout his lectures and published writings on anthropology, Kant describes a form of unintentional, unstructured, obscure, and pleasurable imaginative mental activity, which he calls fantasy (Phantasie), where we ‘take pleasure in letting our mind wander about in obscurity.’ In the context of his pragmatic anthropology, Kant was concerned not only to describe this form of mental activity as a fact of human psychology, but more importantly, to criticize and discourage it. But must we share Ka…Read more
  •  92
    Kantian Self-Conceit and the Two Guises of Authority
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50 (2): 268-283. 2020.
    There is a debate in the literature as to whether Kantian self-conceit is intrapsychic or interpersonal. I argue that self-conceit is both. I argue that, for Kant, self-conceit is fundamentally an illusion about authority, one’s own and any authority one stands in relation to. Self-conceit refuses to recognize the authority of the law. But the law “shows up” for us in two guises: one’s own reason and other persons. Thus, self-conceit refuses to recognize both guises of the law. Hence self-concei…Read more
  •  62
    Tamar Schapiro Feeling Like It: A Theory of Inclination and Will (review)
    Philosophical Review 131 (4): 519-523. 2022.
  •  43
    Kant on Evil, Self-Deception, and Moral Reform (by Laura Papish) (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 58 (2): 410-411. 2020.
  •  3
    The Space of Pathos: Heideggerean Angst and Ethics
    In Hans Feger & Manuela Hackel (eds.), Existenzphilosophie und Ethik, De Gruyter. pp. 329-340. 2013.
  •  1
    “The Opacity of Human Action.”
    In Colin Marshall & Colin McLear (eds.), Kant’s Fundamental Assumptions., Oxford University Press. forthcoming.