My primary research interests are in historical perspectives on moral psychology and action theory, with a focus on evil, freedom, and the role of feeling and the 'heart' in moral action. I have further interests in love, forgiveness, and the metaphysics of causation. Though I do detailed textual/historical work, it is always guided by the aim of finding the most plausible views and connecting to wider conversations in contemporary philosophy.
Published work
"Kant's concept of the heart: a developmental account." Winner of the 2025 Wilfrid Sellars Junior Scholar Essay Prize. Kantian Review, 31(1), 2026: 135-152. OpenAccess, available here.
"Do good people love themselves? On rational self-love in Kant." Kant-Studien, 115(4), 2024: 433-453. Published version here; preprint available here.
"Kant's three stages of evil as stages of the heart." Forthcoming in Proceedings of the 14th International Kant Congress, 2027. Preprint available here.
Book reviews:
"Alice Pinheiro Walla, Happiness in Kant's Practical Philosophy: Morality, Indirect Duties, and Welfare Rights." Kant-Studien, 116(3), 2025: 453-457.
"Thomas E. Hill, Jr., Beyond Duty: Kantian Ideals of Respect, Beneficence, and Appreciation." Utilitas, 35(2), 2023: 164-167.
"Critical notice of Allen W. Wood, Kant and Religion." Kant-Studien, 113(1), 2022: 161-173.
Translation:
Selections from Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. In Russ Shafer-Landau, Living Ethics: An Introduction with Readings, 3rd edition (Oxford University Press), 2024. Translation commissioned to be maximally accessible to beginning readers.
In preparation/under review
Full drafts available upon request.
Paper on Kant's view of moral weakness.
Paper on Kant's view of moral revolution (the 'change of heart')
Paper on radical evil and the desire to 'be like God'.
Paper on self-forgiveness
Work in progress
Paper on the love-respect dynamic in Kantian ethics
Paper on Kantian radical evil and the sicut deus tradition
Paper on Mary Shepherd's Causal Principle and the PSR
Paper on the possibility of aesthetic accountability"
Dissertation
Dissertation - "Finite, feeling, but free: Kant on evil and action."
Committee: Eric Watkins, Lucy Allais (co-chairs), Dana Nelkin, Clinton Tolley, Piotr Winkielmann (Psychology).
My dissertation investigates Kant’s explanation of evil action. Dominant ‘intellectualist’ readings of Kant’s action theory sharply separate rational judgment from motivation and argue that agents only act on motivations which they judge to be good. This yields implausible explanations of evil action and unduly downplays Kant’s well-developed efficient-causal theory of motivation. I develop and defend an alternative ‘layered conativist’ interpretation. It is conativist in that our actions are ultimately caused by our strongest desires. It is layered in that both efficient-causal motivation and normative judgment contribute to determining what our strongest desires are. Far from being isolated, the interaction between these ‘layers’ explains why we act as we do. This interaction is made possible by Kant’s radical view that we freely choose our own nature and are thereby responsible for our motivations. The result is a more well-rounded view of human agency, which does better justice to the roles of feeling and motivation in Kant’s moral theory and explains a wider range of evil actions.
Part I develops a new layered reading of Kant’s action theory. At the ‘efficient-causal’ layer, we are determined to act by our strongest motivating grounds, which are always based on feeling. At the ‘normative’ layer, we formulate ‘maxims’ which express our endorsement of motivating grounds as good. A special motivating ground, ‘character’, mediates between the two layers. Part II argues that agents freely choose their own nature at a third, ‘intelligible’ layer. I offer the first metaphysically robust explanation of how it is possible for this choice to be outside of time and yet subject to change. This intelligible choice for good or evil connects with our particular sensible nature in Kant’s oft-neglected concept of ‘heart.’ Morality accordingly must speak not just to our reason, but our whole heart. Part III shows how the resulting picture explains the range of evil actions. Reading Kant’s three ‘stages’ of evil as different stages of the heart yields a comprehensive taxonomy of evil action. In particular, layered conativism naturally and plausibly explains the first stage, ‘frailty’ or weakness of will, which extant interpretations have struggled to account for.
