•  4
    Moral Friendship as Perfectionist Resistance
    Teaching Ethics 21 (1): 93-101. 2021.
    There are striking points of affinity between Hannah Arendt’s concept of a politico-moral variety of allusive thinking, and Stanley Cavell’s concept of aversive thinking characteristic of Emersonian Moral Perfectionism (EMP). Although both Arendt and Cavell’s EMP are pessimistic if not hostile to the suggestion of the redemption of a vibrant public sphere, their thought suggests possible moves toward a practical politico-moral philosophy—political philosophy as provocative moral practice recogni…Read more
  • Beneficence and Decision Making in the Treatment of Meningomyelocele
    Dissertation, The Johns Hopkins University. 1986.
    Medical techniques now make it possible to keep alive many victims of meningomyelocele who formerly would have died. A number of physicians and others have said that it is permissible to withhold treatment when the infant, if kept alive, would suffer serious physical or mental impairment. They contend that for some infants it will be better to die than to survive severely impaired, and that this policy is permissible because it is beneficent, i.e., directed by the intention to bring about the pa…Read more
  •  46
    Philosophy as Conversion
    Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 17 (3): 71-84. 1998.
  •  34
    Socrates in the Agora
    Philosophy in the Contemporary World 7 (4): 43-49. 2000.
    Philosophical counseling recommends to its clients the activity of philosophical dialogue. The process of thought in dialogue differs from private thought in the greater physical constraints placed upon dialogue. We as yet do not have an understanding of the embodied activity of philosophy sufficient to make viable the marketing of philosophical counseling as a service. The paper is a contribution to such an understanding. The paper considers the notion of a philosophical life and criticizes the…Read more