Research Interests 

Post-Kantian German Philosophy (esp. Hegel and German Idealism); Early Modern Philosophy (esp. Spinoza); 

Kant; Social & Political Philosophy; European Social Theory 

Dissertation Project

My dissertation, titled “Subject or Substance? Hegel, Spinoza, and the Metaphysics of Freedom,” presents anti-acosmism as a central theme orienting the metaphysics of both Hegel and Spinoza and examines how this shared metaphysical commitment grounds their respective theories of human freedom. I therefore challenge Hegel’s characterization of Spinoza as an acosmist and reconstruct a Spinoza who is considerably more congenial to Hegel’s own philosophical aspirations. Yet I do not thereby erase the fundamental difference between them. Rather, I relocate it at a deeper metaphysical level, in their competing conceptions of self-grounding (causa sui), a disagreement that, I argue, also bears on contemporary debates about metaphysical grounding.

Hegel's Social and Political Philosophy

Besides my dissertation project, I maintain a serious interest in Hegel's social and political philosophy, and its contemporary reverberations in critical theory. My first publication (“Hegel on the Ethical Limits of Property” in the European Journal of Philosophy) argues that Hegel’s defense of private property is institutionally flexible within definite ethical constraints and can therefore accommodate Marx’s critique of capitalism. I am in the process of completing its sequel, which takes up the issue of how Hegel’s account of labor and recognition in the Master/Servant dialectic illuminates his theory of civil society in the Philosophy of Right. I have also worked with Rahel Jaeggi on Hegel’s philosophy of history and am currently developing a paper on Hegel’s account of social structure and its historical progress.