Princeton University
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2023
APA Eastern Division
Baltimore, Maryland, United States
  •  294
    Hobbes’s model of refraction and derivation of the sine law
    Archive for History of Exact Sciences 75 (3): 323-348. 2021.
    This paper aims both to tackle the technical issue of deciphering Hobbes’s derivation of the sine law of refraction and to throw some light to the broader issue of Hobbes’s mechanical philosophy. I start by recapitulating the polemics between Hobbes and Descartes concerning Descartes’ optics. I argue that, first, Hobbes’s criticisms do expose certain shortcomings of Descartes’ optics which presupposes a twofold distinction between real motion and inclination to motion, and between motion itself …Read more
  •  106
    Law and Physics in Leibniz
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 62 (1): 49-73. 2024.
    In this paper I argue that there is a structural parallelism between law and physics in Leibniz since his early years, which has significant influence on the formation of his views. I start by examining Leibniz's early physical system and an analogy with juridical laws that he uses to explain the structure of physical laws. Then, I argue that this analogy stems from an envisioned parallelism between law and physics. Finally, I illustrate the significance of this legal-physical parallelism by arg…Read more
  •  1
    Leibniz as a virtue ethicist
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. forthcoming.
    In this paper I argue that Leibniz's ethics is a kind of virtue ethics where virtues of the agent are explanatorily primary. I first examine how Leibniz obtained his conception of justice as a kind of love in an early text, Elements of Natural Law. I show that in this text Leibniz's goal was to find a satisfactory definition of justice that could reconcile egoism with altruism, and that this was achieved through the Aristotelian virtue of friendship where friends treat each other as “other selve…Read more