•  4
    Remembering Women
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 43 (2): 341-370. 2022.
  •  8
    Peer Gynt and Oedipus: Ibsen on Hegel's Precursors of Modernity
    Hegel Bulletin 43 (1): 121-143. 2022.
    G. W. F. Hegel sees Oedipus as an epitome of the philosophical quest for self-knowledge. In Hegel's readings of Oedipus, the latter becomes a distant reflection of the modern and mature Hegelian self, who consciously takes on this quest. Yet unlike Oedipus, whose search for the truth about his past is characterized by both metaphorical and literal blindness, the modern self knows itself, precisely because it understands its past and can thus appropriate and situate itself in relation to the pres…Read more
  •  20
    This essay concerns Simone de Beauvoir's analysis of blame and punishment in “Œil pour œil” and the irreconcilable tensions that haunt it. I study these tensions—between the desire to blame and punish and the inability to provide moral justification for these practices—and locate their source in Beauvoir's conception of ethics in Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté. According to my reading, her ethics implies that violence violates freedom, the grounding principle of ethical life. Retaliatory and ret…Read more
  •  52
    Ways of Imagining: A New Interpretation of Sartre’s Notion of Imagination
    British Journal of Aesthetics 59 (2): 129-146. 2019.
    In the conclusion to The Imaginary Jean-Paul Sartre draws attention to the centrality of imagination in human life, describing it as a constitutive structure of consciousness. Imagination, according to him, is not a contingent feature of consciousness, but one of its essential features. This essay re-examines Sartre’s notion of imagination, arguing that current interpretations do not exhaust its meaning. Beginning with a consideration of dichotomies that dominate his theory of imagination—such a…Read more
  •  14
    Rethinking the Relationship Between Memory and Imagination in Sartre's the Imaginary
    Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 43 (2): 143-160. 2012.
  •  61
    Jean-Paul Sartre’s early phenomenological texts reveal the complexity of his relationship to Edmund Husserl. Deeply indebted to phenomenology’s method as well as its substance, Sartre nonetheless confronted Husserl’s transcendental turn from Ideas onward. Although numerous studies have focused on Sartre’s points of contention with Husserl, drawing attention to his departure from Husserlian phenomenology, scholars have rarely examined the way in which Sartre engaged and responded to the early Hus…Read more
  •  63
    Sartre and Ricoeur on Productive Imagination
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 52 (1): 43-60. 2014.
    Commenting on Jean-Paul Sartre's theory of imagination, Paul Ricoeur argues that Sartre fails to address the productive nature of imaginative acts. According to Ricoeur, Sartre's examples show that he thinks of imagination in mimetic terms, neglecting its innovative and creative dimensions. Imagination, Ricoeur continues, manifests itself most clearly in fiction, wherein new meaning is created. By using fiction as the paradigm of imaginative activity, Ricoeur is able to argue against Sartre that…Read more
  •  9
    Imagining the Given and Beyond
    Contemporary Pragmatism 13 (1): 70-87. 2016.
    Imagination is crucial to Joseph Margolis’ philosophy: he addresses its significance for the experience of works of art and, more importantly, he portrays it as constitutive of human reality itself. I explicate these claims and define Margolis’ notion of imagination vis-à-vis Jean-Paul Sartre’s, whose own conception of imagination Margolis rejects. Studying Margolis and Sartre in relation to each other illuminates crucial differences between their positions and highlights the different commitmen…Read more
  •  45
    Thinking with Beauvoir on the Freedom of the Child
    Hypatia 31 (1): 140-155. 2016.
    Among philosophers, Simone de Beauvoir is unique in treating childhood as a philosophical phenomenon. In both The Ethics of Ambiguity and The Second Sex, she examines the relationship between childhood and human freedom and considers its role in the development of subjectivity. Despite this, few sustained analyses of her treatment of the phenomenon exist. I argue that Beauvoir's conception of childhood is not uniform, but changes from The Ethics of Ambiguity to The Second Sex. Whereas the former…Read more
  •  1
    Memory and the Passions in Descartes' Philosophy
    History of Philosophy Quarterly 28 (4): 339. 2011.
  •  50
    Reflection, Memory and Selfhood in Jean-Paul Sartre's Early Philosophy
    Sartre Studies International 19 (2): 97-111. 2013.
    The article advances an interpretation of the self as an imaginary object. Focusing on the relationship between selfhood and memory in Sartre's The Transcendence of the Ego , I argue that Sartre offers useful resources for thinking about the self in terms of narratives. Against interpretations that hold that the ego misrepresents consciousness or distorts it, I argue that the constitution of the ego marks a radical transformation of the conscious field. To prove this point, I turn to the role of…Read more