•  50
    From Theodicy to Ontodicy
    Idealistic Studies 42 (2-3): 131-144. 2012.
    I interpret Heidegger’s “Origin of the Work of Art” in terms of his contemporaneous lectures on Schelling’s Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom. I uncover several connections and similarities between the two works, which make possible a new reading of the artwork essay: namely, as an “ontodicy.” This term of Jean-Luc Nancy’s denotes the readiness with which Heidegger’s thinking on Being may be used to justify evil. I argue that Nancy’s term may be applied legitimately …Read more
  •  38
    Spinoza and German Idealism ed. by Eckart Förster, Yitzhak Y. Melamed (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 51 (3): 495-496. 2013.
    It turns out that you can teach an old dog—even a “dead dog,” as Lessing would describe Spinoza—new tricks. In Spinoza and German Idealism, we learn not only how Spinoza influenced the German Idealists, but also how they transformed and gave new life to the key concepts of his system. In this collection of fourteen essays, we see how Kant, Schleiermacher, Herder, Goethe, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Trendelenburg understood (and misunderstood) Spinoza’s conception of God, intellectual intuition…Read more
  •  36
    Hegel and the Identity of Indiscernibles
    Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 96 (1): 71-103. 2014.
    : Hegel is commonly thought to affirm Leibniz’s principle of the identity of indiscernibles, which states that no two things are exactly alike. I argue that this interpretation is mistaken: it cannot accommodate passages in which Hegel rejects PII, and the texts cited in favor of this interpretation admit of another reading, which I provide. On my view, Hegel distinguishes between different senses of PII, and the sense of PII he accepts only entails that determinacy is immanent to individuals qu…Read more
  •  36
    The Paradox of Irrationalism
    The Owl of Minerva 46 (1/2): 1-42. 2014.
    I resolve a tension in Hegel’s views, which I call the “paradox of irrationalism,” in order to lay the logical foundation of Hegel’s philosophy of the absurd. The paradox is that Hegel both affirms and denies that the world is rational. While critics maintain that this presents a genuine problem for Hegel, I argue Hegel resolves this paradox by showing that reason constitutes itself through the irrational element that it itself grounds. I make my case by investigating the categories of diversity…Read more
  •  27
    Kant’s Critique of Leibniz’s Rejection of Real Opposition
    Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 3 (1): 91-134. 2013.
  •  20
    Kant’s Critique of the Identity of Indiscernibles
    In Stefano Bacin, Alfredo Ferrarin, Claudio La Rocca & Margit Ruffing (eds.), Kant und die Philosophie in weltbürgerlicher Absicht. Akten des XI. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, De Gruyter. pp. 405-420. 2013.
  •  17
    I interpret Heidegger’s “Origin of the Work of Art” in terms of his contemporaneous lectures on Schelling’s Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom. I uncover several connections and similarities between the two works, which make possible a new reading of the artwork essay: namely, as an “ontodicy.” This term of Jean-Luc Nancy’s denotes the readiness with which Heidegger’s thinking on Being may be used to justify evil. I argue that Nancy’s term may be applied legitimately …Read more
  •  14
    Hegel et la tragédie grecque (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 50 (2): 301-302. 2012.
  •  7
    As dictums go, Hegel’s Doppelsatz—“what is rational is actual [wirklich]; and what is actual is rational”—has a nice ring to it, right up there with “existence precedes essence” and “revenge is a dish best served cold.” Still, it has long befuddled readers: what does it mean, and what does it suggest about Hegel’s worldview?Anyone looking for answers to these questions would do well to consult the essays in Wirklichkeit. Beiträge zu einem Schlüsselbegriff der Hegelschen Philosophie. The essays a…Read more