Research

Accepted. "Leviathan Unmoored: Melville and the Fragility of Democratic Meaning," Philosophy and Literature.

Abstract: Democratic societies depend on shared symbols that sustain meaning without metaphysical authority. Yet those symbols—open to plural interpretation—are precarious. Reading Moby-Dick through a phenomenological lens, this article argues that Herman Melville transforms the whaling voyage into an experiment in democratic meaning. The White Whale functions as a civic symbol that binds equals together until Ahab’s monomania turns reverence into idolatry. Ishmael’s humility, by contrast, embodies the virtues of democratic reverence—humility, restraint, and openness to mystery. Moby-Dick thus reveals a central paradox of democratic freedom: equality liberates citizens from hierarchy even as it dissolves the shared imagination that binds them. Melville’s vision invites a reconsideration of democracy’s moral foundations, suggesting that its endurance depends not only on law or procedure but on a politics of reverence capable of sustaining meaning amid pluralism and uncertainty.

Accepted. "The Politics of Unbloodied Altars: Liberalism's Response to Mimetic Violence," Journal of Continental Philosophy. 

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.

2026. “Towards a Renewed Civic Pragmatism: Integrating Policy, Law, and Statistical Literacy in Civics Education,” Laws, Vol. II of Civic Engagement, Justice, and the Law in a National and International Context.

Abstract: Since 2017, more than a dozen civics institutes have been founded at America’s public universities, marking a renaissance in civic education. Grounded in the liberal arts, these institutes rightly restore the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and reconnect citizens to the nation’s past. Yet liberal education requires assistance to help students navigate today’s data-driven republic, where questions of law and justice increasingly turn on the interpretation of evidence. This article proposes a balanced model for civics education—a “renewed civic pragmatism”—that unites the historical connectedness of liberal learning with the technical skills required for public life and the rule of law. In doing so, civics education recovers its role as a bridge between moral principle, empirical judgment, and the pursuit of justice under law.

2025. "'An Enthusiasm for Liberty and for the Dignity of the Human Race': Honour, Dignity and Degradation in Tocqueville's Thought," History of Political Thought, 46(4). 

Abstract: Most accounts of Tocqueville emphasize his analysis of liberty and equality, but far less attention has been given to his treatment of dignity (dignité). Whereas aristocratic societies organized conduct around the comparative logic of honour, Tocqueville recognized that democratic societies required a different moral foundation that would preserve the worth of individuals without relying on rank. This article argues that Tocqueville’s reflections on dégradation—the erosion of status, self-respect, and mutual obligation—reveal an underlying preoccupation with sustaining dignity as the moral substrate of democratic life. Drawing on Democracy in America, The Old Regime and the Revolution, Memoir on Pauperism, and Tocqueville’s correspondence, I show that his concern with dignity clarifies both his critique of the manufacturing aristocracy and his defense of religion, associations, local institutions, and public opinion. By reconstructing Tocqueville’s implicit theory of dignity, the article demonstrates that dignity is not ancillary but essential to the preservation of liberty and equality in modern democracy.

2025. “Pascal Beyond Two Worlds: Modernity and the Crisis of Time Consciousness,” The Seventeenth Century, 40(6), 931-948. 

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 17th century French 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.

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) 

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.

(In draft). "Whither the Withdrawn?: Political Disaffection, Recognition, and Democratic Belonging"

Abstract: Political disaffection—citizens’ estrangement from politics despite affirming democratic ideals—is usually explained through apathy, efficacy, or incentives. This article reframes disaffection as a distortion of care, or a breakdown in participatory understanding where citizens fail to see themselves recognized in democratic decision-making. Drawing on Gadamer’s hermeneutics, I specify a mechanism whereby technocratic opacity, unreciprocated voice, and threats to dignity contract interpretive horizons, transforming ordinary contestation into perceived betrayal. A sketch of pension and healthcare controversies illustrates how recognition practices plausibly shift horizons of “betrayal” toward “necessity.” This framework integrates a phenomenological method with institutional analysis, yielding practical implications for democratic theory and political practice: information alone rarely restores participation; visible recognition, dialogic venues, and temporal scaffolds are essential to sustaining belonging in democratic life.

  (In draft). "The Nation as Interpretation: Ortega y Gasset and the Hermeneutics of Liberal Belonging." 

Abstract: Liberal nationalism seeks to reconcile freedom with belonging by grounding civic life in shared history. Yet its dominant formulations misidentify liberalism’s adversary, neglect the moral psychology of belonging, and presume a Eurocentric genealogy that overlooks peripheral experiences of renewal. This article reconstructs José Ortega y Gasset’s philosophy of razón histórica (“historical reason”) as a hermeneutic model for overcoming these impasses. Reading Ortega as a theorist of hermeneutics, it argues that his thought discloses a form of liberal cosmopolitan nationalism—a vision of the nation as an interpretive community that sustains meaning without metaphysical or imperial foundations. Against both procedural cosmopolitanism and nostalgic nationalism, Ortega presents civic belonging as a hermeneutic practice in which citizens sustain liberal freedom by continually reinterpreting their shared past in light of a common future. His work thus reframes the question of national identity after empire, revealing how liberalism might recover solidarity through the interpretive labor of understanding itself.

(In progress). "The Whole Man is There in the Cradle: Tocqueville’s Critique of Rousseau’s Child Education," (with Jack Bevacqua).

Abstract: Tocqueville opens his famous chapter on the point of departure of Anglo-Americans in Democracy in America with a perplexing comparison to child psychological development. Just as for a child “the whole man is there… in the cradle,” he claims, so too does the young American nation already carry the virtues and vices it will have in its maturity. Far from incidental, this metaphor recurs throughout Democracy in America and Tocqueville’s other writings. This paper asks: what is the function of Tocqueville’s allusions to child psychology? We argue that Tocqueville references childhood moral development implicitly to critique Rousseau’s theory of education in the Discourses and the Émile. For both thinkers, childhood becomes a metaphor for the young polity and the problem of moral formation. While Rousseau rejects the Lockean notion of the child as a blank slate, he nevertheless retains the Enlightenment faith that a proper education can refashion human nature and preserve its innate goodness from moral corruption. Tocqueville denies this formative optimism, discerning in both the child and the nation the persistence of early-formed dispositions that no pedagogy can fully erase. For him, moral education must therefore emphasize the cultivation of stable habits rather than the futile preservation of natural innocence. By tracing this tension between formative optimism and moral habituation, this paper illuminates Tocqueville’s distinctive understanding of democratic character and national development.

(In progress). “National Identity After Exile: María Zambrano and the Remaking of Liberal Subjectivity.”

(In progress). “A Reluctant Defense of Progress, With Reference to Tocqueville’s Philosophy of History.”

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

(In progress). “Cervantes as Political Theorist: The Narrative Politics of Don Quixote.” Submission to special issue of Literature on “The Thinker as Artist & the Artist as Thinker.”