My research explores Kant's theoretical and natural philosophy and its historical context. My wider research and teaching interests include the relationship between metaphysics and natural philosophy in the early modern period and the legacies of Kantian philosophy in the nineteenth and twentieth century. My short book on Kant's Opus postumum was published in 2023 by Cambridge University Press.
For full details and preprints of articles, please see Publications.
My current research project at FRIAS, Universität Freiburg, uses resources from Kant's theoretical philosophy to intervene in debates in the philosophy of climate change.
I am particularly interested in the role of ideas of reason in Kant's epistemology, metaphysics and philosophy of science.
Selected publications:
"The Cosmological Ideas in Kant’s Critical Philosophy: Their Unique Status and Twofold Regulative Use". Southern Journal of Philosophy (2024)
"Seeking, Finding, and Doctrinal Belief: On Schafer’s Kant’s Reason" Studi Kantiani (2024)
"Kant on Limits, Boundaries, and the Positive Function of Ideas". European Journal of Philosophy (2022)
I have worked on pre-Kantian rational cosmology, Kant's early cosmology, and the transformations that both undergo in the critical philosophy. My ongoing research is particularly concerned with the regulative use of the cosmological ideas in Kant's mature philosophy.
Selected publications:
"D’Alembert’s Cosmological View of the Sciences and its Legacy in Kant". Perspectives on Science (2024)
"Kant’s Universal Natural History and Analogical Reasoning in Cosmology" in Wolfgang Lefèvre ed., Between Leibniz, Newton, and Kant (new edition) (2023)
"Kant’s Inaugural Dissertation and the Problem of Rational Cosmology". Review of Metaphysics (2022)
"From the Boundary of the World to the Boundary of Reason: The First Antinomy and the Development of Kant’s Critical Philosophy". HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science (2022)
Alongside my book, my articles and chapters on Kant's Opus postumum have examined Kant's use of definitions, the conception of systematicity and physics, the notion of 'transition', and problems relating to the manuscript.
Selected publications:
"Systematicity and the Definition of a Science: Physics in Kant’s Opus postumum" in Gabriele Gava, Thomas Sturm and Achim Vesper eds., Kant and the Systematicity of the Sciences (2025)
"Physics as System in Fascicles X/XI of Kant’s Opus postumum" in A. Lyssy and G.P. Basile eds., Perspectives on Kant’s Opus postumum (2023)
"The Transition within the Transition: the Übergang from the Selbstsetzungslehre to the Ether Proofs in Kant’s Opus postumum". Kant-Studien (2019)
"The Material Literary Form of Kant's Opus postumum". Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy (2018)
A series of papers explores the concept of force (Kraft, vis) in the metaphysics, physics and psychology of Kant, Leibniz, and French and German Enlightenment thinkers.
Selected publications:
"Noumenal Forces? Essences, Things in Themselves, and Dispositions in Kant". Synthese (forthcoming)
"'Also setzen alle mechanischen Gesetze die dynamischen voraus': Kant and his German Predecessors on Dynamical and Mechanical Forces". Kant-Studien (2025)
"Kant’s Concept of Force and its Application in Physics and Psychology" in Luis Fellipe Garcia ed., The Concept of Nature in Classical German Philosophy (2025)
"Kant on the Fundamental Forces of Matter: Why Attraction and Repulsion?" Kantian Review (2021)
"Dreams of Forces and Pneumatology: Kant’s Critique of Wolff and Crusius in 1766". Studi Kantiani (2019)
"Why did Leibniz Fail to Complete his Dynamics?" British Journal for the History of Philosophy (2017)
Various single- and co-authored articles examine issues in early modern and nineteenth- and and twentieth-century philosophy.
Selected publications:
(With Pavel Reichl) "On Progress in Metaphysics: Responses to the Berlin Academy's 1792/95 Prize Essay Question" in Tinca Prunea-Bretonnet and Christian Leduc eds., Debates, Controversies, and Prizes: Philosophy in the German Enlightenment (2024)
"Leibniz’s Conception of Place Against Casey’s Critique" in Jussi Palmusaari and Nicolas Schneider eds., Possibilities of Place in Continental Philosophy (2024)
"The Essay and the Art of Interpretation: Caygill and Nietzsche". Philosophy & Rhetoric (2022)
(With Karin de Boer) "A Ground Completely Overgrown: Heidegger, Kant, and the Problem of Metaphysics". British Journal for the History of Philosophy (2019)
"Archaeology and/or Genealogy: Agamben’s Transformation of Foucauldian Methodology". Journal of Italian Philosophy (2018)