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60What's so bad about fanaticism?Synthese. forthcoming.Fanaticism involves a robust and epistemically peculiar form of commitment: the fanatic is willing to sacrifice himself and others for the sake of his goal, and the fanatic is unable or unwilling to adjust his commitment in light of critical reflection. But is this always morally bad? While Quassim Cassam (2022b) and Paul Katsafanas (2019 and 2023a) have offered accounts of fanaticism that treat it as vicious, Heather Battaly (2023) and others have argued that fanaticism is morally neutral: whet…Read more
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132Depth, Articulacy, and the EgoIn Carla Bagnoli & Bradford Cokelet (eds.), Iris Murdoch's Sovereignty of Good. At 55. (Anniversaries Series, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2025), . forthcoming.Iris Murdoch claims that “clear vision is a result of moral imagination and moral effort.” Our experience of the world can be blurred by egoism, inattentiveness, and other failings. I ask how we distinguish clear vision from distorted vision. Murdoch’s texts appeal to four factors: (A) attention; (B) unselfing; (C) a form of conceptual articulacy; and (D) love. I ask three questions about these standards: - Are these standards directed at the same goal? (For example, are they all geared toward s…Read more
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321Nietzsche's Theory of Mind: Consciousness and ConceptualizationEuropean Journal of Philosophy 13 (1): 1-31. 2005.I show that Nietzsche's puzzling and seemingly inconsistent claims about consciousness constitute a coherent and philosophically fruitful theory. Drawing on some ideas from Schopenhauer and F.A. Lange, Nietzsche argues that conscious mental states are mental states with conceptually articulated content, whereas unconscious mental states are mental states with non-conceptually articulated content. Nietzsche's views on concepts imply that conceptually articulated mental states will be superficial …Read more
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1301An Introduction to the Philosophy of FanaticismIn Fanaticism and the History of Philosophy, Rewriting the History of Philosophy. pp. 1-18. 2023.What is fanaticism and why is it an important philosophical topic? In this introductory chapter, I discuss the way in which fanaticism arose as a central philosophical concern in the early modern period. Philosophical discussions of fanaticism focus on psychological, epistemic, and behavioral dimensions of fanatics. The fanatic displays psychological peculiarities; epistemic defects; and potentially problematic behavioral tendencies. I discuss the ways in which different philosophers have offere…Read more
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345Review of Kaitlyn Creasy, The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 202208. 2022.NDPR review of Kaitlyn Creasy's 'The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche'
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379The Fanatic and the Last ManJournal of Nietzsche Studies 53 (2): 137-162. 2022.Suppose we accept Nietzsche’s claim that critical reflection undermines our evaluative commitments. Then it seems that we are left with a pair of unappealing options: either we engage in critical reflection and find our evaluative commitments becoming etiolated; or we somehow immunize certain evaluative commitments from the effects of critical reflection. Nietzsche considers both of these paths, labeling the person who results from the first path “the last man” and the person who results from th…Read more
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562Recent Work on Nietzsche’s Moral Psychology and EthicsNietzsche Studien 50 (1): 361-381. 2021.A review of the following for books, plus some reflections on Nietzsche's moral psychology and ethics: Alfano: Nietzsche’s Moral Psychology (Cambridge University Press 2019). Leiter: Moral Psychology with Nietzsche (Oxford University Press 2019) Ridley: The Deed is Everything: Nietzsche on Will and Action (Oxford University Press 2018) Stern: Nietzsche’s Ethics (Cambridge University Press 2020) These four books are broadly on Nietzsche’s moral psychology and ethics. The books differ widely…Read more
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433Fanaticism and the History of Philosophy (edited book)Rewriting the History of Philosophy. 2023.Voltaire called fanaticism the "monster that pretends to be the child of religion". Philosophers, politicians, and cultural critics have decried fanaticism and attempted to define the distinctive qualities of the fanatic, whom Winston Churchill described as "someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject". Yet despite fanaticism's role in the long history of social discord, human conflict, and political violence, it remains a relatively neglected topic in the history of philosoph…Read more
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692Group fanaticism and narratives of ressentimentIn Leo Townsend, Ruth Rebecca Tietjen, Michael Staudigl & Hans Bernard Schmid (eds.), The Philosophy of Fanaticism: Epistemic, Affective, and Political Dimensions, Routledge. 2022.The current political climate is awash with groups that we might be tempted to label irrational, extremist, hyper-partisan; it is full of echo-chambers, radicalization, and epistemic bubbles. Philosophers have profitably analyzed some of these phenomena. In this essay, I draw attention to a crucial but neglected aspect of our time: the way in which certain groups are fanatical. I distinguish fanatical groups from other types of problematic groups, such as extremist and cultish groups. I argue…Read more
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840Philosophy of Devotion: The Longing for Invulnerable IdealsOxford University Press. 2023.Why do people persist in commitments that threaten their happiness, security, and comfort? Why do some of our most central, identity-defining commitments resist the effects of reasoning and critical reflection? Drawing on real-life examples, empirical psychology, and philosophical reflection, this book argues that these commitments involve an ethical stance called devotion, which plays a pervasive—but often hidden—role in human life. Devotion typically involves sacralizing certain values, goa…Read more
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471What makes the affirmation of life difficult?In Keith Ansell-Pearson & Paul S. Loeb (eds.), Cambridge Critical Guide to Nietzsche's 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra', Cambridge University Press. 2022.Nietzsche suggests that even individuals who take themselves to bear an affirmative attitude toward life would be horrified by the thought of eternal recurrence (roughly, the idea that our lives will repeat endlessly in exactly the same fashion). But why? Why is it supposed to be more difficult to affirm recurring lives than to affirm a non-recurring, singular life? I argue that standard interpretations of eternal recurrence are unable to answer this question. I offer a new interpretation of ete…Read more
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201Activity and Passivity in Reflective Agency 1Oxford Studies in Metaethics 6 219. 2011.Many philosophers maintain that there is a distinction between acts that the agent plays an active role in producing, and acts that issue from the agent in a more passive fashion. According to the standard account, we can make sense of this distinction by maintaining that reflective or deliberative acts are paradigmatic cases of an agent’s playing an active role in the production of action. This chapter argues that this standard account is mistaken. Reflective or deliberative actions will seem t…Read more
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14Editorial NoteJournal of Nietzsche Studies 50 (2). 2019.The North American Nietzsche Society held its second biannual conference at Stanford University on October 5–7, 2018. The three-day event featured invited keynotes by Jessica Berry and John Richardson. In addition, the program committee selected seven papers from a pool of over seventy submissions. The conference concluded with a group discussion on Nietzsche's attitude toward empirical science, featuring invited presentations by Maudemarie Clark and Tsarina Doyle.Lanier Anderson deserves specia…Read more
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816Review of Agnes Callard, Aspiration (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (2): 464-469. 2021.Review of Agnes Callard's Aspiration. Forthcoming in a symposium on the book in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
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44Moral Critique and Philosophical PsychologyJournal of Nietzsche Studies 49 (2): 245-253. 2018.This essay is one of ten contributions to a special editorial feature in The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 49.2, in which authors were invited to address the following questions: What is the future of Nietzsche studies? What are the most pressing questions its scholars should address? What texts and issues demand our urgent attention? And as we turn to these issues, what methodological and interpretive principles should guide us? The editorship hopes this collection will provide a starting point …Read more
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818Fanaticism and Sacred ValuesPhilosophers' Imprint 19 1-20. 2019.What, if anything, is fanaticism? Philosophers including Locke, Hume, Shaftesbury, and Kant offered an account of fanaticism, analyzing it as (1) unwavering commitment to an ideal, together with (2) unwillingness to subject the ideal (or its premises) to rational critique and (3) the presumption of a non-rational sanction for the ideal. In the first part of the paper, I explain this account and argue that it does not succeed: among other things, it entails that a paradigmatically peaceful and …Read more
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629Nietzsche and Murdoch on the Moral Significance of Perceptual ExperienceEuropean Journal of Philosophy 26 (1): 525-545. 2018.: This paper examines a claim defended by an unlikely pair: Friedrich Nietzsche and Iris Murdoch. The claim is that perceptual experience itself—as distinct from perceptually based judgments and beliefs—can be morally significant. In particular, Nietzsche and Murdoch hold that two agents in the same circumstances attending to the same objects can have experiences with different contents, depending on the concepts that they possess and employ. Moreover, they maintain that this renders perception …Read more
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73Nietzsche’s account of self-conscious agencyPhilosophical Explorations 21 (1): 122-137. 2018.This essay is an overview of Nietzsche’s philosophy of action. I discuss the central features of Nietzsche’s account and the ways in which it departs from standard accounts. Section 1 discusses Nietzsche’s view of the opacity of human action. I focus on the way in which the agent’s experience of the world is shaped by unnoticed and unconscious factors. Section 2 asks what role self-consciousness has in the production of action. Section 3 turns to the way in which Nietzsche understands the action…Read more
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18NANS Editorial NoteJournal of Nietzsche Studies 48 (2): 151-151. 2017.The North American Nietzsche Society held the first of its stand-alone conferences at Hunter College’s Roosevelt House in New York City on October 14–17, 2016. The three-day event featured invited keynotes by Bernard Reginster, Christopher Janaway, and Beatrix Himmelmann. In addition, the program committee selected seven blind-reviewed abstracts from a pool of over sixty submissions. The conference concluded with a group discussion on Nietzsche’s conception of philosophy, featuring invited prese…Read more
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15Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity, edited by ChristopherJanaway and SimonRobertson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, ix + 262 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-958367-6 hb $75.00 (review)European Journal of Philosophy 21 (S4): 9-14. 2013.
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45Response to Bernard Reginster, Jorah Dannenberg, and Andrew HuddlestonJournal of Nietzsche Studies 47 (3): 457-478. 2016.I want to begin by thanking Bernard Reginster, Jorah Dannenberg, and Andrew Huddleston for their exceptionally rich and insightful critiques of my book. It is rare to find commentators who have engaged so deeply and so thoughtfully. Reginster, Dannenberg, and Huddleston have not focused on subsidiary or inessential themes: their discussions target the book’s central topics and pivotal moves in the argument. I am very grateful to them for taking the time to write such challenging and thoughtful r…Read more
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298ConstitutivismIn Kelly Becker & Iain D. Thomson (eds.), The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945–2015, Cambridge University Press. 2019.A brief explanation and overview of constitutivism.
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749Nietzschean approaches to hermeneuticsIn Michael Förster & Kristin Gjesdal (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Hermeneutics, Cambridge University Press. 2018.This essay charts several key points of contact between Nietzsche and the hermeneutical tradition. It begins by arguing that the familiar claim that Nietzsche offers a hermeneutics of suspicion is potentially misleading. Seeking a more accurate representation of Nietzsche’s views, the essay argues that Nietzsche’s interpretive stance has several key features: he rejects immediate givens, endorses holism and perspectivism, and sees conscious experience as structured by concepts and language. Meth…Read more
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1524I argue that the rarely discussed Antichrist can serve as perhaps the best guide to Nietzsche’s mature ethical theory. Commentators often argue or assume that while Nietzsche makes many critical points about traditional morality, he cannot be offering a positive ethical theory of his own. This, I argue, is a mistake. The Antichrist offers a substantive ethical theory. It explicitly articulates Nietzsche’s positive ethical principles, shows why these principles are justified, and uses them to con…Read more
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29Review of Craig Dove, Nietzsche's Ethical Theory: Mind, Self and Responsibility (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (5). 2009.
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239Nietzsche on Agency and Self-IgnoranceJournal of Nietzsche Studies 43 (1): 5-17. 2012.Nietzsche frequently claims that agents are in some sense ignorant of their own actions. In this conference paper, I ask two questions: what exactly does Nietzsche mean by this claim, and how would the truth of this claim affect philosophical models of agency? I argue that Nietzsche's claim about self-ignorance is intended to draw attention to the fact that there are influences upon reflective episodes of choice that have three features. First, these influences are pervasive, occurring in ever…Read more
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536The Emergence of the Drive Concept and the Collapse of the Animal/Human DivideIn Peter Adamson & G. Fay Edwards (eds.), Animals: A History (Oxford Philosophical Concepts), Oxford University Press. 2018.In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, philosophers including Kant and Hegel draw a sharp distinction between the human and the animal. The human is self-conscious, the animal is not; the human has moral worth, the animal does not. By the mid to late nineteenth century, these claims are widely rejected. As scientific and philosophical work on the cognitive and motivational capacities of animals increases in sophistication, many philosophers become suspicious of the idea that ther…Read more
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2887Constitutivism about Practical ReasonsIn Daniel Star (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity, Oxford University Press. pp. 367-394. 2018.This paper introduces constitutivism about practical reason, which is the view that we can justify certain normative claims by showing that agents become committed to these claims simply in virtue of acting. According to this view, action has a certain structural feature – a constitutive aim, principle, or standard – that both constitutes events as actions and generates a standard of assessment for action. We can use this standard of assessment to derive normative claims. In short, the authority…Read more
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209The Problem of Normative Authority in Kant, Hegel, and NietzscheIn D. Owen & A. Ridley (eds.), Nietzsche, Morality, and the Ethical Tradition, . 2017.Kant and Hegel share a common foundational idea: they believe that the authority of normative claims can be justified only by showing that these norms are self-imposed or autonomous. Yet they develop this idea in strikingly different ways: Kant argues that we can derive specific normative claims from the formal idea of autonomy, whereas Hegel contends that we use the idea of freedom not to derive, but to assess, the specific normative claims ensconced in our social institutions and practices. …Read more
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427On Homuncular Drives and the Structure of the Nietzschean SelfJournal of Nietzsche Studies 45 (1): 1-11. 2014.If Clark and Dudrick have their way, gone will be the days of breezy writings on Nietzsche that recruit a phrase from here, a paragraph from there, and construct an interpretation from the resultant mélange. Clark and Dudrick advocate a meticulous, line-by-line study of Nietzsche’s text, with painstaking attention not only to the broader context of his claims, but even to the precise intent of the images and metaphors that he employs. Here, we find a level of textual scrutiny and careful conside…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
19th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
19th Century Philosophy |