Research

My book, Hegel’s Concept of Life: Self-Consciousness, Freedom, Logic (Oxford, 2020), is a systematic defense of the centrality of the concept of life for understanding the key tenets of Hegel’s philosophy, and in particular, for an understanding of his Science of Logic. In addition to offering a new interpretation of Hegel’s idealism, my book also reconsiders the development of post-Kantian thought in light of the concept of life, charting the influence of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hölderlin on the development of Hegel’s philosophy.

Winner of the 2021 Journal of the History of Philosophy Book Prize.

Book Symposium in European Journal of Philosophy. (Critics: Khurana, Peters, Yeomans)
Book Symposium in Hegel Bulletin. (Critics: Koch and Rand)
Review in Mind.
Review in The Philosophical Review.
Review in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
Review in Hegel-Studien.
Review in Philosophy.
Review in Hegel Bulletin.
Review in Idealistic Studies.
Review in SGIR Review (Society for German Idealism and Romanticism).
Review in Symposium.
Review in Philosophy in Review.
Review in Thémata. Revista de Filosofía.
Review in Philosophy Today.
Review in Mutatis Mutandis: Revista Internacional de Filosofía. 
Review in Bulletin de littérature hégélienne.
Response Essay in boundary 2.

Book Discussions: Leuven Seminar in Classical German Philosophy; APA Eastern 2021 Author Meets Critics; Steel Center at Hendrix College; VAMP (Vanderbilt Modern Philosophy Group); Colloquium at Freie Universität Berlin; Colloquium at Södertörn University, Stockholm; Seminar on Hegel’s Logic at UC Berkeley.

In addition to my research in post-Kantian philosophy, I am also interested in the ongoing influence of Hegel and Marx for critical social theory, particularly as their legacies help us to understand the relation between human beings and nature, possibilities and failures of mutual recognition, and conceptions of progress and critique. In 2018, I was an instructor at the Critical Theory Summer School in Berlin on the topic of Rethinking Ideology, and a research fellow at the Center for Humanities and Social Change at the Humboldt University in Berlin. I was also an instructor at the Groningen Critical Theory Summer School on Philosophy and Social Critique in 2021. In 2021–2022, I will be a faculty fellow at the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt University working on the theme of “Environments.” I am also a part of the DFG funded research network, “The Relation between Recognition Theory and Theories of Epistemic Injustice.” From 2023 to 2025, I will be an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Potsdam.

I am currently at work on a number of new projects. One is a book tentatively titled, Species-Being: Ethical Life Between Humanity and Nature. Drawing on Hegel, German idealism, Marx, and critical theory, I aim to show how the concept of species-being or Gattungswesen provides a framework for both understanding and assessing ethical life. I am also writing a book for the Cambridge Elements series on Hegel and the Frankfurt School. Together with Sacha Golob, I am currently at work editing the Cambridge Handbook of Continental Philosophy.

Publications (link to pdfs)

Journal Articles

  1. “On Subjects, Objects, and Ground: Life as the Form of Judgment,” European Journal of Philosophy 29 (2021):1162–1175.
  2. “Humanism: A Defense,” Philosophical Topics 49:1 (2021): 145–163.
  3. “What is a Logical Concept of Life: Reply to Critics,” Hegel Bulletin (2021), doi:10.1017/hgl.2021.22.
  4. “Science of Logic as Critique of Judgment? Reconsidering Pippin’s Hegel,” European Journal of Philosophy 27 (2019): 1055–1064.
  5. “Social Freedom as Ideology,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 45:7 (2019): 795–818.
  6. “Life and the Space of Reasons: On Hegel’s Subjective Logic,” Hegel Bulletin 40:1 (2019): 121–142.
  7. “Life and Mind in Hegel’s Logic and Subjective Spirit,” Hegel Bulletin 39:1 (2018): 23–44.
  8. “Leben, Selbstbewusstsein, Negativität. Zum Verständnis von Hegels These der Speculativen Identität,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 64:4 (2016): 522–550.
  9. “Ideology Critique from Hegel and Marx to Critical Theory,” Constellations 22:3 (September 2015): 393–404.
  10. “Hegel’s Logic of Actuality,” Review of Metaphysics 63:1 (September 2009): 139–72.

Book Chapters

  1. “The Idea of the Earth in Günderrode, Schelling, and Hegel”, in Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Women Philosophers in the German Tradition, ed. Kristin Gjesdal and Dalia Nassar (Oxford University Press, forthcoming)
  2. “Forget the Nightmare: Materialism and Second-Order Critique,” in Analyzing Ideology: Rethinking the Concept, ed. Robin Celikates, Sally Haslanger, and Jason Stanley (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
  3. “Public Opinion and Ideology in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” in Freedom, Right, Revolution: Practical Philosophy Between Kant and Hegel, ed. James Clarke and Gabriel Gottlieb (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
  4. “From Actuality to Concept in Hegel’s Logic,” in The Oxford Handbook of Hegel, ed. Dean Moyar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 270­–291. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199355228.013.13.
  5. “Hegel and Adorno on Negative Universal History: The Dialectics of Species-Life,” in Creolizing Hegel, ed. Michael Monahan (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), pp. 113–133. (refereed)
  6. “Human Plurality and Precarious Life: Problems in Hannah Arendt’s Theory of Judgment,” in Thinking the Plural: Richard Bernstein and the Expansion of American Philosophy, ed. Megan Craig and Marcia Morgan (New York: Lexington Books, 2017), pp. 21–36. (refereed)
  7. “Life, Self-Consciousness, Negativity: Understanding Hegel’s Speculative Identity Thesis,” in The Freedom of Life: Hegelian Perspectives, ed. Thomas Khurana (Berlin: August Verlag, 2013), pp. 33–67.

Book Reviews

  1. Honneth Double Review: Recognition: A Chapter in the History of European Ideas and Debating Critical Theory: Engagements with Axel Honneth, Constetellations (2022), DOI: 10.1111/1467-8675.12645.
  2. “Back to Adorno: Critical Theory’s Problem of Normative Grounding,” review of Amy Allen’s The End of Progress, Current Perspectives in Social Theory 36 (2020): 49–59.
  3. Review of James Kreines’ Reason in the World: Hegel’s Metaphysics and its Philosophical Appeal, in Philosophical Review 127:3 (2018): 399–408.
  4. Review of Wendell Kisner’s Ecological Ethics and Living Subjectivity in Hegel’s Logic, in Hegel-Studien 49 (2016): 237–240.
  5. Review of Clark Butler’s The Dialectical Method: A Treatise Hegel Never Wrote, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (01/13/2013).
  6. Review of Richard Dien Winfield’s Hegel and Mind: Rethinking Philosophical Psychology, Hegel-Bulletin 33:1 (January 2012): 88–101.
  7. Review of Robert Stern’s Hegelian Metaphysics, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 31:2 (2010): 443–449.
  8. “Reflections on an Impossible Life,” review of Detlev Claussen’s Theodor W. Adorno: One Last Genius, Telos 150 (2010): 170–175.
  9. Review of John Sallis’ The Verge of Philosophy, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 29:2 (2008): 203–208.

Translations

  1. “The Significance of §§76 and 77 of the Critique of Judgment for the Development of Post-Kantian Philosophy (Part 1/Part 2),” translation, with Matthew Congdon, of Eckart Förster’s “Die Bedeutung von §§76, 77 der Kritik der Urteilskraft für die Entwicklung der nachkantischen Philosophie (Teil I/Teil II),” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 56:2/56:3 (2002), in Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 30:2/31:2 (2009/2010).

Other

  1. Entry on “Life,” in The Cambridge Kant Lexicon, ed. Julian Wuerth (Cambridge, 2021).
  2. “The Past, the Present, and the Owl of Minerva,” in APA Newsletter on Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophy, special issue on “What Is It Like to Be a Philosopher of Asian Descent?” 20:1 (Fall 2020).
  3. “What can we learn from a philosophy of nature today?” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, “From the Archives” Blog Post (May 2016).