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Ethical Veganism and Free RidingJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 24 (2): 184-212. 2023.The animal agriculture industry causes animals a tremendous amount of pain and suffering. Many ethical vegans argue that we therefore have an obligation to abstain from animal products in order to reduce this suffering. But this argument faces a challenge: thanks to the size and structure of the animal agriculture industry, any individual’s dietary choices are overwhelmingly unlikely to make a difference. In this paper, we criticize common replies to this challenge and develop an alternative arg…Read more
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The Metaphysics of Stoic CorporealismApeiron 55 (2): 219-245. 2022.The Stoics are famously committed to the thesis that only bodies are, and for this reason they are rightly called “corporealists.” They are also famously compared to Plato’s earthborn Giants in the Sophist, and rightly so given their steadfast commitment to body as being. But the Stoics also notoriously turn the tables on Plato and coopt his “dunamis proposal” that being is whatever can act or be acted upon to underwrite their commitment to body rather than shrink from it as the Giants do. The s…Read more
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The Social Philosophy of Gerald Gaus: Moral Relations Amid Control, Contestation, and ComplexityJournal of the American Philosophical Association 9 (3): 510-532. 2023.Gerald Gaus was one of the leading liberal theorists of the early twenty-first century. He defended liberal order based on its unique capacity to handle deep disagreement and pressed liberals toward a principled openness to pluralism and diversity. Yet, almost everything written about Gaus's work is evaluative: determining whether his arguments succeed or fail. This essay breaks from the pack by outlining underlying themes in his work. I argue that Gaus explored how to sustain moral relations be…Read more
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Of Rule and Office: Plato's Ideas of the PoliticalPrinceton University Press. 2023.A new reading of Plato’s political thought Plato famously defends the rule of knowledge. Knowledge, for him, is of the good. But what is rule? In this study, Melissa Lane reveals how political office and rule were woven together in Greek vocabulary and practices that both connected and distinguished between rule in general and office as a constitutionally limited kind of rule in particular. In doing so, Lane shows Plato to have been deeply concerned with the roles and relationships between ruler…Read more
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The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Psychology of Forgiveness (edited book)Routledge. 2023.
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Epicureans and Stoics on the Rationality of PerceptionWiley: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 106 (1): 58-83. 2023.This paper examines an ancient debate over the rationality of perception. What leads the Stoics to affirm, and the Epicureans to deny, that to form a sense-impression is an activity of reason? The answer, we argue, lies in a disagreement over what is required for epistemic success. For the Stoics, epistemic success consists in believing the right propositions, and only rational states, in virtue of their predicational structure, put us in touch with propositions. Since they identify some sense-i…Read more
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The Stoic Conception of LawPolis 38 (3): 557-572. 2021.The Stoics identify the law with the active principle, which is corporeal, pervades the universe, individuates each part of the world, and causes all its movements. At the same time, the law is normative for all reasoners. The very same law shapes the movements of the cosmos and governs our actions. With this reconstruction of Stoic law, I depart from existing scholarship on whether Stoic law is a set of rules. The question of whether ethics involves a set of rules is rich and fascinating. In th…Read more
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First Wave Feminism: Craftswomen in Plato’s RepublicApeiron 55 (4): 485-507. 2022.Ancient Athenian women worked in industries ranging from woolworking and food sales to metalworking and medicine; Socrates’ mother was a midwife. The argument for the inclusion of women in the guardian class must be read in light of this historical reality, not least because it allows us retain an important manuscript reading and construe the passage as relying on an inductive generalization rather than a possibly circular argument. Ultimately, Plato fails to fully capitalize on the resources he…Read more
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Compassion and Moral Responsibility in Avatar: The Last Airbender: “I was never angry; I was afraid that you had lost your way”In Helen De Cruz & Johan De Smedt (eds.), Avatar: The Last Airbender and Philosophy: Wisdom From Aang to Zuko, Wiley-blackwell. 2022.
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Psychological disease and action-guiding impressions in early StoicismBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 29 (5): 784-805. 2021.The early Stoics diagnose vicious agents with various psychological diseases, e.g. love of money and love of wine. Such diseases are characterized as false evaluative opinions that lead the agent to form emotional impulses for certain objects, e.g. money and wine. Scholars have therefore analyzed psychological diseases simply as dispositions for assent. This interpretation is incomplete, I argue, and should be augmented with the claim that psychological disease also affects what kind of action-g…Read more
University of Arizona
PhD, 2018
Areas of Specialization
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
Virtue Ethics |