Research

2025. “Might Makes Rights: A Ciceronian Critique of Pettit’s Theory of Liberty,” POLIS: The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought, 42(2), 279-304.

Abstract: Philip Pettit is best known for his defense of liberty as non-domination. Since his initial defense of this concept in Republicanism (1997), scholars have critiqued his normative defense of liberty for failing to capture key aspects of the classical republican conception of liberty. This article contributes to this critique by comparing Pettit’s defense of liberty with an account from his most famous classical source, Cicero. It argues that Pettit misses necessary conceptual and institutional components that allow non-domination to emerge. Through a reading of Book 2 of Cicero’s De re publica, it argues that, contrary to Pettit's principles, non-domination in Rome frequently derived from a dominating source. This article concludes that without understanding this theoretical complexity within non-domination, Pettit’s neo-Republican ideal remains impossible to achieve in practice.

2025. “Tocqueville and Democratic Historical Consciousness,” The European Legacy, 30(2), 151-168.   

Abstract: This article assesses to what extent the future of democratic liberty depends upon its citizens employing a proper approach to the past, by analyzing Tocqueville’s views of three kinds of historical consciousness— aristocratic, revolutionary, and democratic. It is argued that democracies require certain aristocratic assumptions about historical dynamics to cultivate a historical consciousness that fosters liberty. Key to this is the belief in the human capacity to influence the trajectory of history. Tocqueville’s historical approach, which blends aristocratic and democratic elements, is identified as the most effective method for tempering the fatalistic tendencies of the democratic point of view. Thus, for democracies to maintain liberty, citizens should recognize the dual role of general causes and human agency in directing the course of historical events. Tocqueville’s insights on the effects of historical consciousness on the future of democratic liberty remain particularly relevant today when Western democracies confront internal polarization and external anti-democratic challenges, whether neoliberal, illiberal, populist, or fascist.

2024. “Nostalgia for Empire? José Ortega y Gasset, Memory, and ‘The Spanish Problem,’” The Political Science Reviewer 48(2), 57-82.

Abstract: This article identifies a consistent thread in Ortega y Gasset’s early political thought from 1914-1921. This thread lies in his treatment of Spain’s identity crisis after their defeat against the United States in the Disaster of 1898. Two of his early books, Meditaciones del Quijote and España Invertebrada, are identified as works that reveal the historical causes and effects of Spain’s identity crisis. Both works meditate upon the significance of Spain’s imperial past as a solution to their identity crisis yet reach different conclusions about what their imperial past means for their present situation. It is argued that the tying thread within his approaches to address Spain’s identity crisis is in his appeal to a particular historical method based on his metaphysical assertion that "I am myself plus my circumstances." 

2024. “How a People Becomes a People: Memory and Identity in Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia,” American Political Thought 13(3), 371-394. 

Abstract: The question of how a people becomes a people is perhaps the least studied idea in the Declaration of Independence. This article looks to Jefferson's only full-length book, Notes on the State of Virginia, to clarify this question. It is argued that in Query XIII Jefferson depicts the Virginians as becoming a people upon declaring their rights through their own institutions. The Virginians were thus recognized as a people by Parliament in 1651. It is further argued that this account of people formation in the Notes sets the groundwork for Jefferson's thinking about a people in the Declaration, as the American people became a people in the same way as the Virginians: by declaring their rights.

2024. “Does Artificial Intelligence Speak Our Language?: A Gadamerian Assessment of Generative Language Models,” Political Research Quarterly 77(3), 713-728.

Abstract: The language argument is a classic argument for human distinctiveness that, for millenia, has been used to distinguish humans from non-human animals. Generative language models (GLMs) pose a challenge to traditional language-based models of human distinctiveness precisely because they can communicate and respond in a manner resembling humanity's linguistic capabilities. This article asks: have GLMs acquired natural language? Employing Gadamer's theory of language, I argue that they have not. While GLMs can reliably generate linguistic content that can be interpreted as "texts," they lack the linguistically mediated reality that language provides. Missing from these models are four key features of a linguistic construction of reality: groundedness to the world, understanding, community, and tradition. I conclude with skepticism that GLMs can ever achieve natural language because they lack these characteristics in their linguistic development. 

2024. “Thinking and Political Considerations: Gnômê in the Stoic Political Philosophy of Epictetus,” The Political Science Reviewer 48(1), 87-112.

Abstract: Much has recently been written on the inevitable demise of liberalism because of a lack of virtue forming intermediary institutions. Liberalism, in its nearly three-century history, has always relied on a certain set of virtues within its citizenry. The absence of virtue forming institutions within liberalism suggests that liberals should look elsewhere for virtue. Adopting this line of thinking, this article suggests a lost virtue that might rescue liberalism from itself: what the Stoic philosopher Epictetus identifies as gnômê. Gnômê refers to our rational activity that according to the Stoics ought to be conformed to nature and, when practiced properly, aligns the basic reality of nature to the moral and ethical choices people make. “Gnomic education,” I argue, will teach citizens how to think in accordance with nature without institutional aid.

(R&R at The Political Science Reviewer). "Acting as Though the Republic Were Real: Don Quixote and the Absurd Task of Civic Education"

Abstract: This article argues that the character of Don Quixote can be interpreted as a model civic educator. Challenging the view of Quixote as merely deluded, the article positions him as a tragicomic exemplar of moral imagination and principled dissent—one who performs civic ideals even when they appear absurd or out of step with reality. Through a close reading of key episodes across both parts of Cervantes’s novel, the essay develops the concept of “Civic Quixotism”: a form of democratic engagement grounded in performative idealism, hopeful dissent, and the educative power of example. Quixote’s “madness” is not mere folly, but a pedagogical stance that reshapes perception and inspires ethical transformation in those around him—especially his squire, Sancho Panza, who subsequently inspires a transformation in his master. In contrast to dominant trends in civic education that prioritize critique or procedural knowledge, Civic Quixotism proposes a pedagogy that embraces the ideals of citizenship amidst an environment that is unfamiliar with or openly hostile towards those ideals—because doing so becomes the most effective form of modeling citizenship. 

(Under review). “'Everything Which Is Not Reserved Is Given': James Wilson, Popular Sovereignty, and the Federalist Doctrine of Plenary State Legislative Power" (with Kirstin Anderson Birkhaug—Hope College) 

Abstract: This article recovers James Wilson’s theory of plenary state legislative power as a foundational yet neglected dimension of democratic federalism in the American constitutional tradition. Whereas conventional accounts treat state legislatures as instruments of institutional efficiency, Wilson understood them as direct expressions of popular sovereignty, vested with full legislative authority unless explicitly limited by constitutional text. Drawing on Wilson’s political theory and early state constitutions (1774–1787), we argue that plenary state legislative power was a deliberate feature of American constitutionalism. We further contend that Wilson’s framework offers a compelling democratic alternative to the consolidation of policymaking authority in distant national bodies, allowing for a reconceptualization of federalism as a system in which diverse state legislatures act as co-authors of democratic self-rule, responsive to the varied needs, values, and voices of the American people.

(Under review). "‘An Enthusiasm for Liberty and for the Dignity of the Human Race’: Tocqueville’s Master and Servant Reconsidered."

Abstract: Although scholars have long emphasized Tocqueville’s concern for balancing liberty and equality, they have often overlooked his persistent focus on moral degradation (dégradation)—the erosion of social status, self-respect, and mutual obligation, all essential components of human dignity (la dignité humaine). Drawing on Tocqueville’s major works and correspondence, this article argues that while he seldom invoked the term dignity explicitly, his concern with degradation reflects a deeper preoccupation with sustaining the social and moral foundations of civic equality. By examining Tocqueville’s treatment of the master-servant relationship across aristocratic and democratic contexts, the article shows that he regarded the preservation of dignity (dignité) as dependent on both moral and institutional safeguards—including religion, philanthropy, public accountability, and local associations. In bringing this overlooked dimension of Tocqueville’s political thought to light, the article contributes to broader debates about how liberal democracies might reconcile economic modernization with the enduring moral imperatives of human dignity.

(Under review). “Pascal Beyond Two Worlds: Modernity and the Crisis of Time Consciousness.” 

Abstract: This article reconstructs Blaise Pascal’s critique of modernity by examining his implicit metaphysics of time. Although Pascal contributed to early modern science, he articulates a distinct view of time consciousness that resists the secularization of historical experience. Drawing on Augustinian theology, Pascal distinguishes between sacred time, ordered teleologically toward divine fulfillment, and profane time, marked by disordered human autonomy and presentist distraction. This metaphysical distinction informs his critique of Enlightenment notions of progress and individual self-sufficiency, exemplified by Descartes and Montaigne. The article argues that Pascal offers a metaphysical corrective to modernity by framing human temporality as a site of both existential dislocation and eschatological hope.

(In draft). "Chasing Leviathans: Moby-Dick as a Democratic Tragedy."

Abstract: This article reinterprets Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick as a meditation on the role of transcendence in sustaining democratic stability. Reading the Pequod as a microcosm of democratic society—understood in Tocquevillean terms as characterized by equality of conditions—this study adopts a phenomenological lens to examine the whale as a contested ontological symbol that shapes the crew’s collective moral orientation. Divergent interpretations of the whale among the crew generate tensions over the ship’s purpose. For Ahab, the whale embodies cosmic malevolence, transmuting his personal obsession into a despotic mission that dismantles the ship’s civic order. In contrast, Ishmael regards the whale as a sublime mystery, one that nurtures democratic virtues such as humility, resilience, and self-restraint. Through this tension, Moby-Dick reveals the fragility of democratic cohesion when reverence for transcendent ideals is eclipsed by individual will, leaving societies vulnerable to charismatic despotism. This reading highlights the essential role of shared moral symbols—not only institutional frameworks—in sustaining democratic life.

(In draft). “The Politics of Unbloodied Altars: Liberalism's Response to Symbolic Violence.” 

Abstract: This essay argues that postwar liberal political theory, exemplified by Judith Shklar’s “liberalism of fear,” is ill-equipped to address symbolic violence in Western democracies—ideologically driven acts like mass shootings or white supremacist attacks—due to liberalism’s fixation on state-sponsored cruelty and its dismissal of transcendental ideals (“the sacred”) as an element of social stability. This essay turns to René Girard’s mimetic theory to argue that such acts should be interpreted as ritual sacrifices, driven by mimetic rivalry and a desire to restore symbolic order. Liberalism’s rejection of the sacred exacerbates these crises by leaving mimetic impulses unchecked. By interpreting violence as sacrifice, this essay proposes that liberalism can develop a “grammar of the sacred” to interpret and mitigate such violence through non-violent civic rituals, like national mourning or bipartisan congressional testimonies of civic repentance. These practices preserve liberal pluralism while channeling destructive desires into civic solidarity, fortifying liberalism against modern sacrificial crises.

  (In draft). "Contested Pasts, Shared Futures: Ortega y Gasset and the Hermeneutics of Civic Belonging." 

Abstract: This article turns to the political thought of José Ortega y Gasset as a resource for reconstructing national identity in culturally diverse, post-imperial societies. I argue that Ortega offers a distinctive model of what I call liberal cosmopolitan nationalism—a framework that avoids the coercive tendencies of ethnic nationalism and the rootlessness of cosmopolitanism. At the center of Ortega’s vision is razón histórica (“historical reason”), a hermeneutic method that views individuals as historically embedded and oriented toward a shared future. For Ortega, the nation is not an inherited essence but a project in common—a dynamic, intergenerational enterprise grounded in civic memory, commitment, and historical continuity. This article contends that Ortega's thought provides a compelling vision for constructing inclusive national identities without abusing historical particularity or undermining liberal values.

(In progress). “Civic Thought and the Problem of Political Disaffection.”

(In progress). “The Intellectual as Statesman: Ortega y Gasset and the Public Role of University Professors”

(In progress). “Teaching Competence and Character: The Role of Statistics and Policy Research in Civics Education” (with Michael Driscoll—Florida State University)

(In progress). “Rescuing Progress: Tocqueville’s Philosophy of History.”

(Early stages). “The Didactic Character of Embedded Narratives: “El Curioso Impertinente” in Don Quijote.” Submission to special issue of Literature on “The Thinker as Artist & the Artist as Thinker.”