Publications
"Anticipating Painful Pleasures: on False Anticipatory Pleasures in the Philebus" - Ancient Philosophy 44 (2): 339-361. 2024. [link to article]
Abstract: In the Philebus, Socrates argues that some anticipatory pleasures can be false. The main argument at 38b6-41a4 has perplexed readers, however, and scholars have developed several different ways to understand the falsity of false anticipatory pleasures. I argue that the anticipation argument should be read in conjunction with a later distinction in the Philebus between intense pleasures mixed with pain and pure pleasures free from pain. I suggest that anticipatory pleasures taken in intense pleasures are false because they misidentify an intense pleasure as a genuine pleasure when in fact intense pleasures are inferior and non-genuine due to being mixed with pain. I contend that the example of a false anticipatory pleasure supports recognizing this kind of falsity, and that doing so helps to resolve several challenges that face existing interpretations.
Dissertation
In March 2025 I successfully defended my dissertation, entitled '"Our Waking Dreams": On Pleasant and Painful Anticipation in Plato and Aristotle,' concerning the important but under-theorized role that affective anticipation plays in the moral psychology found in two late Platonic dialogues, the Philebus and the Laws, and in Aristotle's psychological and ethical works.
Abstract: Affective anticipation occurs when we pleasantly or painfully anticipate some future prospect. For example, my anticipation of the harmful effects of nuclear war can itself be distressing despite that fact that I am not currently suffering any harms from a nuclear blast, while my anticipation of spending time with my loved ones tomorrow can itself be pleasant even before I am with them. Though Plato and Aristotle both theorized affective anticipation (albeit without using this exact terminology), there is no dedicated scholarly treatment of this phenomenon in the contemporary secondary literature. My dissertation rectifies this scholarly lacuna and shows that affective anticipations play a key role in the theories of motivation, emotions, virtue, and education that are found within two late Platonic dialogues, the Philebus and the Laws, and within Aristotle's ethical and psychological works.
In Chapters 1 & 2 I argue that affective anticipation plays a central role in complex forms of locomotion in Plato’s Philebus and Aristotle’s psychological works. In Chapter 3 I defend a distinction between two kinds of affective anticipation: (i) non-rational affective anticipation that is based off of memories and past-sensations and (ii) rational affective anticipation that is based on an understanding of goods and bads. In Chapter 4 I turn to Plato’s Laws I-II and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and argue that both take emotions such as fear, confidence, and shame to be partly constituted by affective anticipations. I contend that this explains the motivational force of these emotions and illustrates how affective anticipations pervade their moral psychology. Finally, in Chapter 5, I examine the theory of moral education (paideia) found in Plato’s Laws and Aristotle's Ethics and Politics. I argue that both take moral education to start with musical education that causes learners to feel the proper pleasant and painful non-rational anticipations (and the related emotions partly constituted from these) such that they are motivated to perform virtuous actions before understanding the nature of virtue. Full ethical perfection, however, requires a transition to rational affective anticipations that embody an understanding of what is good and bad in human life.
Work In Progress
"A Version of Aversion Aristotle Wouldn't Be Averse To"
Abstract: In this paper I attempt to reconcile Aristotle’s evident tendency to treat aversion and desire as two separate ways in which we can be motivated with a passage in De Anima III.7 that claims that desire and aversion are the 'same but different in being.' I defend a new way to understand this identity that takes inspiration from the rational capacities described in Metaphysics Θ.2 that can be active in two separate ways. An example is medicine, a capacity that enables a doctor to either heal someone or make someone ill. I argue that desire and aversion should likewise be understood as two aspects of a single capacity that can be active in two distinct ways: pursuit or avoidance. This interpretation clarifies the sense in which aversion and desire are ‘the same but different in being’ while also making sense of Aristotle’s tendency to compare pursuit and avoidance to affirmation and denial.
I recently presented this material at the postgraduate session of the 98th Joint session of the Aristotelian society and the Mind Association in July 2024. [link to conference]
"Hoping to Die? Socrates on the Hope that Death is Good in the Apology"
Abstract: In the Apology, Socrates says that there is ‘much hope’ that death is good because death is either one of two things, either of which would be good: complete annihilation or the relocation of the soul to an afterlife. I resolve a worry facing existing interpretations: Socrates cannot simultaneously hope to escape the evils of life through annihilation (as some scholars allege) while also hoping for an eternal afterlife whose good-making feature is one found in his actual life – examining eminent Greeks purported for wisdom. The former hope depends on denying the value of his life while the latter hope depends on affirming it. In contrast, I argue that Socrates can consistently hope for both options insofar as both enhance the value of a life devoted to philosophy in distinct but compatible ways.
I recently presented this material at the 2024 West Coast Plato Workshop at Seattle University in May 2024.
Veniet tempus quo ista quae nunc latent in lucem dies extrahat et longioris aevi diligentia. Ad inquisitionem tantorum aetas una non sufficit, ut tota caelo vacet; quid quod tam paucos annos inter studia ac vitia non aequa portione dividimus? Itaque per successiones ista longas explicabuntur. Veniet tempus quo posteri nostri tam aperta nos nescisse mirentur.
(Seneca, Naturales quaestiones 7.25)
The time will come when diligent research over very long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject. What about the fact that we do not divide our few years in an equal portion at least between study and vice? And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them
(Translation by Corcoran)