Research

I am currently working on a series of papers on two distinct themes: (1) vice and moral improvement in Plato and Aristotle, and (2) the relationship between law and virtue in Plato's Laws.

Publications

1. "Curable and Incurable Vice in Aristotle", Ancient Philosophy 45 (1): 221-236. 2025.

I argue that central to Aristotle’s account of vice is a distinction between two varieties of vicious person: those for whom character change is possible (the curable), and those for whom it is not (the incurable). Recognizing this distinction and drawing out the ideas which ground it shows why Aristotle’s discussions of vice in EN vii and ix 4 are not inconsistent.

2. "Preambular Persuasion as Proleptic Engagement: The Legislative Strategy of Plato's Laws", The Classical Quarterly 74.2, 485-498. 2024.

In the Laws, Plato argues that legislation must not only compel, but also persuade. This is accomplished by prefacing laws with preludes. While this procedure is central to the legislative project of the dialogue, there is little interpretative agreement about the strategy of the preludes. This paper defends an interpretation according to which the strategy is to engage with citizens in a way that anticipates their progress toward a more mature evaluative outlook, and helps them grow into it. This paper shall refer to this strategy as proleptic engagement. While the virtuous ways of life required by law are intimately connected to happiness, the preludes do not persuade by spelling out this connection. Rather, they persuade by telling citizens what they need to hear so that they can come to appreciate this connection for themselves, in the context of their own lives. While the preludes are many and varied, this paper argues that all preambular material can be understood as proleptic engagement.

3. (with Rachana Kamtekar) "Happiness (eudaimonia)", Bloomsbury Handbook of Plato, 2nd edition, Gerald Press and Mateo Duque (Eds), 251-253. 2023.

In contemporary usage, ‘happiness’ is sometimes taken to be a feeling, as temporary or permanent as feelings are. In ancient Greek usage, by contrast, eudaimonia, the term translated ‘happiness’, characterizes a whole life and not just a moment of feeling, and has an objective dimension: the happy life not only feels good to the one who lives it, but is good. Sometimes translators use ‘flourishing’ instead; one ground for this is that not only humans, but other species as well, are said to flourish when they are in a good condition relative to their capacities, but it was for the ancients a philosophical issue whether eudaimonia ought to be conceived this way, and indeed whether a life of pleasure not only feels good to the one who lives it but also is the best life; the same philosophical issue arises today about happiness, and it cannot be settled by a translation (see Kraut 1979). The same may be said, mutatis mutandis, for other expressions treated as equivalent to eudaimonein (being happy) in Plato’s dialogues, such as eu zen (living well), eu prattein (doing well).

Book reviews

1. Review of James Warren, Regret: A study in Ancient Moral Psychology, The Philosophical Review 134 (3), 351-355. 2025.

Regret: A Study in Ancient Moral Psychology is an exemplary work on an undertheorized phenomenon: metameleia, or regret. James Warren considers a range of ancient accounts and brings these into conversation with contemporary issues. Besides his interpretative suggestions, Warren engages with the ancients on strictly philosophical grounds, exploring implications of their arguments and applying their frameworks to new questions. Regret is a valuable contribution to ancient moral psychology and will inspire further work.

Dissertation (Cornell, 2024)

Legislating for virtue: an essay on virtue and law in Plato’s Laws

It is Plato’s view in the Laws that promoting the virtue of citizens is the primary goal at which the laws should aim. This is a basic normative standard that the interlocutors design Magnesia’s law-code in accordance with, and it serves to situate the legislative project of Laws squarely in the perfectionist realm. A theory of this kind must be able to answer three basic questions: (1) What is law? (2) What is virtue? (3) How does the former promote the latter? I reconstruct Plato’s answers to all three, so as to unite the dialogue’s central ethical and political commitments.