•  104
    An early work in continental philosophy of religion.
  • On Pessimism: A Study in Normative Psychology
    Dissertation, Syracuse University. 2012.
    I aim to revive pessimism as a topic of discussion in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition. Toward that end, I defend a theory of pessimism designed to (a) locate pessimism within the existing Anglo-American philosophical literature and (b) to account for the epistemic and prudential conditions under which pessimism can be warranted. I argue for three theses: (1) that pessimism is a stance premised on a belief that the bad prevails over the good; (2) that pessimism is not necessarily the p…Read more
  •  363
    An early work in literary interpretation and analysis
  •  1140
    An early work on Nietzsche and posttraumatic psychology
  •  226
    Introductory remarks on the philosophical significance of psychological trauma. Presented at the 'Philosophical Engagements with Trauma' conference, UNC Asheville, March 2019
  •  3769
    What Pessimism Is
    Journal of Philosophical Research 37 337-356. 2012.
    On the standard view, pessimism is a philosophically intractable topic. Against the standard view, I hold that pessimism is a stance, or compound of attitudes, commitments and intentions. This stance is marked by certain beliefs—first and foremost, that the bad prevails over the good—which are subject to an important qualifying condition: they are always about outcomes and states of affairs in which one is personally invested. This serves to distinguish pessimism from other views with which it i…Read more
  •  2651
    The Secular Problem of Evil: An Essay in Analytic Existentialism
    Religious Studies 57 (1): 101-119. 2021.
    The existence of evil is often held to pose philosophical problems only for theists. I argue that the existence of evil gives rise to a philosophical problem which confronts theist and atheist alike. The problem is constituted by the following claims: (1) Successful human beings (i.e., those meeting their basic prudential interests) are committed to a good-enough world; (2) the actual world is not a good-enough world (i.e., sufficient evil exists). It follows that human beings must either (3a) m…Read more
  •  593
    Unthinkable ≠ Unknowable: On Charlotte Delbo’s ‘II Faut Donner à Voir’
    Journal of Value Inquiry 48 (3): 457-468. 2014.
    This paper is an attempt to articulate and defend a new imperative, Auschwitz survivor Charlotte Delbo’s 'Il faut donner à voir': “They must be made to see.” Assuming the ‘they’ in Delbo’s imperative is ‘us’ gives rise to three questions: (1) what must we see? (2) can we see it? and (3) why is it that we must? I maintain that what we must see is the reality of evil; that we are by and large unwilling, and often unable, to see the reality of evil; and that if there is to be comprehension of—to sa…Read more