-
2The Good Will Be FirstOxford Studies in Normative Ethics 8 78-101. 2018.Good-willed or morally worthy action is one that is morally right non-accidentally: as she performs it the agent is, in some way, responsive to its rightness. Several recent accounts have analyzed good-willed action in terms of a composition of right action plus some requirements on the agent’s psychological condition, but tend to leave unexamined the direction of conceptual dependence between right action and good-willed action. I argue that significant difficulties arise when right action is t…Read more
-
77The Doing of Justice and the Priority of Acting from VirtuePhronesis 66 (4): 366-401. 2021.Aristotle famously distinguishes between merely doing a virtuous action and acting in the way in which a virtuous person would. Against an interpretation prominent in recent scholarship, I argue that ‘acting virtuously,’ in the sense of exercising a virtue actually possessed, is prior to ‘virtuous action,’ understood generically. I propose that the latter notion is best understood as a derivative abstraction from the former, building upon a reading of a neglected distinction between per se and c…Read more
-
1When Life Imitates Art: Vital Locomotion and Aristotle’s Craft AnalogyIn Hynek Bartoš & Colin Guthrie King (eds.), Heat, Pneuma, and Soul in Ancient Philosophy and Science, Cambridge University Press. pp. 260-287. 2020.
-
58Ἡ κίνησις τῆς τέχνης: Crafts and Souls as Principles of ChangePhronesis 62 (2): 136-169. 2017.Aristotle’s soul is a first principle (an ‘efficient cause’) of every vital change in an animal, in the way that a craft is a cause of its product’s coming-to-be. We argue that the soul’s causal efficacy cannot therefore be reduced to the formal constitution of vital phenomena, or to discrete interventions into independently constituted processes, but involves the exercise of vital powers. This reading does better justice to Aristotle’s conception of craft as a rational productive disposition; a…Read more
-
36Weighing Reasons, editted by Errol Lord and Barry MaguireJournal of Moral Philosophy 15 (6): 791-794. 2018.
-
23A Realistic Practical ConclusionAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 52 (2): 115-128. 2015.At least for those who uphold the rationality of morality, ethics and practical reason are not two distinct topics: an ethically sound agent is one whose practical reason functions as it should. Take, for instance, the greatest historical figures. Aristotle claimed that no virtue of character can exist without practical wisdom—the excellence of practical, deliberative reason. And Kant thought that the categorical imperative, the ultimate moral principle that governs a good will, was at the same …Read more
-
6Reasoning and the Unity of Aristotle's Account of Animal MotionOxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 47 151-203. 2014.
-
84Practical Reasoning: Where the Action IsEthics 126 (4). 2016.Widespread conceptions of practical reasoning confront us with a choice between its practicality and its objectivity: between its efficacious, world-changing character and its accountability to objective rational standards. This choice becomes unnecessary, I argue, on an alternative view embodied by the thesis that the conclusion of practical reasoning is an action. I lay bare and challenge the assumptions underlying the rejection of that thesis and outline a defense of its picture of practical …Read more
-
13Discurso y lenguaje: la génesis pre-lingüística del significado en "Ser y Tiempo"Anuario Filosófico 37 (79): 391-428. 2004.This paper provides an interpretation of Sein und Zeit §34, in the context of the existential analytic of Dasein. Dealing with the Rede – Sprache distinction, it tries to show how in Heidegger's conception, at least at the time of writing his main work, language is an existentially founded phenomenon that takes root in the prelinguistic opening of a space of meaning. In the light of this ontological structure of meaning and language it is possible to make sense of the analyzed text and to do jus…Read more
-
128Part One defends the thesis, first advanced by Aristotle, that the conclusion of practical reasoning is an action, and argues for its philosophical significance. Opposition to the thesis rests on a contestable way of distinguishing between acts and contents of reasoning and on a picture of normative principles as external to the actions that fall under them. The resulting view forces us to choose between the efficacious, world-changing character of practical thought and its subjection to objecti…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Action |
Meta-Ethics |
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
Philosophy of Economics |