My research focuses on metaphysics and ethics in early modern, Kantian, and continental philosophy. On the one hand, I aim to understand Kant’s critique of metaphysics in its early modern context. On the other hand, I aim to comprehend the metaphysical ambitions and reinterpretations of critique that Kant provokes in continental traditions including German idealism, hermeneutics, phenomenology, and existentialism. I am also interested in the ethical concerns that both inspire Kant’s critique of metaphysics and motivate post-Kantian philosophies of race and gender.
1. Current Research
1.1 First Monograph
In Facticity and the Fate of Reason, a book under contract with Oxford UP, I examine a question with which Kant’s science of the conditions of intelligibility leaves all post-Kantian philosophers: can a science of intelligibility tolerate brute facts, in particular, brute facts about the human standpoint?
‘Facticity’ is associated with phenomenology, for which the concept denotes undeducibly brute conditions of intelligibility like temporality, sociality, and embodiment. While this suggests an affirmative answer to the post-Kantian question, scholars overlook that ‘facticity’ is a concept from German idealism, whose proponents answer the question firmly in the negative. Fichte coins ‘facticity’ to denote the intolerable contingency of brute conditions, conditions that are putatively presupposed by, and hence inexplicable limitations on, reason. A science of intelligibility must therefore eliminate putative bruteness if it is to be absolute, as Fichte says, or presuppositionless, as Hegel says. Moreover, eliminating putative bruteness requires a new logic for deriving conditions of intelligibility from reason’s own contradictions, a dialectical logic Fichte invents and Hegel develops. German idealism’s post-Kantian logical revolution subsequently provokes Heidegger’s phenomenological objection that dialectic presupposes brute conditions of the dialectician’s lived experience, conditions whose radical contingency dialectic inevitably reproduces and hence must interpret hermeneutically.
The heretofore untold history of the concept of facticity thus contains the deepest parting of the ways after Kant. On the one hand, Hegel eliminates vestigial facticity in Fichte’s system in his final step toward a presuppositionless science of intelligibility, although Schelling charges Hegel with presupposing both the value of science and the existence that science renders intelligible. On the other hand, Heidegger rejects the very idea of presuppositionlessness on behalf of a hermeneutics of facticity, an essentially open and incomplete interpretation of the conditions whereby intelligibility, including philosophical intelligibility, is possible. The trajectory from German idealism to phenomenology is accordingly one in which facticity begins as the obstacle to the science of intelligibility and ends as the character of the situation in which this science is possible in the first place. Within this trajectory, and up to our own time, reason is fated to transform from the hand that unconditionally holds the world to the thrown activity of being in the world.
By uncovering the history of the concept of facticity, its origin, transmission, and repurposing, I aim to open a dialogue between scholars of German idealism and of phenomenology. I ultimately aim to draw attention to the ways in which the post-Kantian path from dialectics toward hermeneutics forces us to reconsider Kant’s original view of brutely human facts as they bear on any account of intelligibility.
1.2 Recent and Forthcoming Articles and Edited Volumes
I have new articles on Kant and Fichte in British Journal for the History of Philosophy and on Schelling in Philosophy Compass. I am preparing an article on the debate on meta-metaphysics in 1790s German philosophy for a special issue of International Journal of Philosophical Studies and an entry on rationalist metaphysics for the Jacobi Online Dictionary. I have just co-edited and contributed to a volume, for Routledge’s Rewriting the History of Philosophy series, on the concept of transformation from the history of Eastern and Western thought. I have recently co-edited and contributed to a special issue of Journal for the History of Analytic Philosophy on Cavell. I am now editing and contributing to a Critical Guide for Cambridge UP on Schelling’s Freedom essay and have just proposed a co-edited volume to Oxford UP on the neo-Kantian bridge between German idealism and phenomenology.
2. Future Research
2.1 Second Monograph
'Nihilism' is a philosophical concept most associated with one of its inheritors: Nietzsche. However, its use and significance predate him by a century. Jacobi coins 'nihilism' in 1799 to denote the result of modern philosophy's total commitment to the principle of sufficient reason (PSR): the denial of one's irreducible agency. Numb to agency's irreducible reality, philosophy constructs inferential systems of infinite grounds, which Jacobi observes in thinkers as diverse as Spinoza, Kant, and Fichte. Nietzsche’s reception of 'nihilism' in the 1880s modifies Jacobi's neologism to denote the result of modern culture's frustrated obsession with securing a theological ground for the PSR: the deadening of one’s life-affirming values. Numb to values' affirmation of life, modern perpetuates inauthentic systems of life-denying values, which Nietzsche observes in harbingers of God's death as diverse as scientism, asceticism, and secularism.
My new book project, Nihilism and the Enigma of Subjectivity, will provide the first comprehensive history of the concept of nihilism. I will show that philosophical and cultural guises of nihilism share a common feature: an uncritical commitment to the PSR. Whether committed to the PSR's total application or to its theological grounding, these guises of nihilism generate hard problems of agency and value, resulting in practical disorientation. However, we can regain orientation by asking what conditions the possibility of PSR's use in the first place. I will argue that the PSR's precondition is the subjective standpoint, robustly conceived in logical, interpersonal, and historical terms. To this end, I will examine the apperceptive, intersubjective, and hermeneutic character of the subjective standpoint. My examination will provide analyses of self-consciousness, mutual recognition, and shared interpretation modelled on work by Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger, all of whom respond to Jacobi and/or Nietzsche, a fact that lacks a unified account in the secondary literature.
With a robust conception of subjectivity as the condition of the possibility of the PSR's use, we can see that a philosophical denial of agency and a cultural deadening of values both exhibit the performative contradiction of disavowing the very standpoint on which philosophy and culture depend.
2.2 Third Monograph
My third book will provide a genealogy of the concept of self-alienation in continental philosophy. I will begin with Kant’s account of how human reason naturally obscures its own theoretical and practical laws, thereby yielding dogmatic metaphysical systems and depraved moral positions. I will then trace the post-Kantian development of this phenomenon—from Fichte’s and Hegel’s idealist accounts of the logical and ethical consequences of consciousness’s tendency to disown its role in shaping the world, to Husserl and Heidegger’s phenomenological accounts of the modern individual’s evasion of its interest in and responsibility for scientific programs and social structures. I will arrive at Beauvoir’s and Fanon’s existentialist accounts of bad faith as wilful denial from one’s freedom, a form of self-effacement that perpetuates systems of oppression including patriarchy and colonialism. I will argue that existentialism offers the most comprehensive picture of the nature and extent of self-alienation, with which philosophy still must reckon.
1. Current Research
1.1 First Monograph
In Facticity and the Fate of Reason, a book under contract with Oxford UP, I examine a question with which Kant’s science of the conditions of intelligibility leaves all post-Kantian philosophers: can a science of intelligibility tolerate brute facts, in particular, brute facts about the human standpoint?
‘Facticity’ is associated with phenomenology, for which the concept denotes undeducibly brute conditions of intelligibility like temporality, sociality, and embodiment. While this suggests an affirmative answer to the post-Kantian question, scholars overlook that ‘facticity’ is a concept from German idealism, whose proponents answer the question firmly in the negative. Fichte coins ‘facticity’ to denote the intolerable contingency of brute conditions, conditions that are putatively presupposed by, and hence inexplicable limitations on, reason. A science of intelligibility must therefore eliminate putative bruteness if it is to be absolute, as Fichte says, or presuppositionless, as Hegel says. Moreover, eliminating putative bruteness requires a new logic for deriving conditions of intelligibility from reason’s own contradictions, a dialectical logic Fichte invents and Hegel develops. German idealism’s post-Kantian logical revolution subsequently provokes Heidegger’s phenomenological objection that dialectic presupposes brute conditions of the dialectician’s lived experience, conditions whose radical contingency dialectic inevitably reproduces and hence must interpret hermeneutically.
The heretofore untold history of the concept of facticity thus contains the deepest parting of the ways after Kant. On the one hand, Hegel eliminates vestigial facticity in Fichte’s system in his final step toward a presuppositionless science of intelligibility, although Schelling charges Hegel with presupposing both the value of science and the existence that science renders intelligible. On the other hand, Heidegger rejects the very idea of presuppositionlessness on behalf of a hermeneutics of facticity, an essentially open and incomplete interpretation of the conditions whereby intelligibility, including philosophical intelligibility, is possible. The trajectory from German idealism to phenomenology is accordingly one in which facticity begins as the obstacle to the science of intelligibility and ends as the character of the situation in which this science is possible in the first place. Within this trajectory, and up to our own time, reason is fated to transform from the hand that unconditionally holds the world to the thrown activity of being in the world.
By uncovering the history of the concept of facticity, its origin, transmission, and repurposing, I aim to open a dialogue between scholars of German idealism and of phenomenology. I ultimately aim to draw attention to the ways in which the post-Kantian path from dialectics toward hermeneutics forces us to reconsider Kant’s original view of brutely human facts as they bear on any account of intelligibility.
1.2 Recent and Forthcoming Articles and Edited Volumes
I have new articles on Kant and Fichte in British Journal for the History of Philosophy and on Schelling in Philosophy Compass. I am preparing an article on the debate on meta-metaphysics in 1790s German philosophy for a special issue of International Journal of Philosophical Studies and an entry on rationalist metaphysics for the Jacobi Online Dictionary. I have just co-edited and contributed to a volume, for Routledge’s Rewriting the History of Philosophy series, on the concept of transformation from the history of Eastern and Western thought. I have recently co-edited and contributed to a special issue of Journal for the History of Analytic Philosophy on Cavell. I am now editing and contributing to a Critical Guide for Cambridge UP on Schelling’s Freedom essay and have just proposed a co-edited volume to Oxford UP on the neo-Kantian bridge between German idealism and phenomenology.
2. Future Research
2.1 Second Monograph
'Nihilism' is a philosophical concept most associated with one of its inheritors: Nietzsche. However, its use and significance predate him by a century. Jacobi coins 'nihilism' in 1799 to denote the result of modern philosophy's total commitment to the principle of sufficient reason (PSR): the denial of one's irreducible agency. Numb to agency's irreducible reality, philosophy constructs inferential systems of infinite grounds, which Jacobi observes in thinkers as diverse as Spinoza, Kant, and Fichte. Nietzsche’s reception of 'nihilism' in the 1880s modifies Jacobi's neologism to denote the result of modern culture's frustrated obsession with securing a theological ground for the PSR: the deadening of one’s life-affirming values. Numb to values' affirmation of life, modern perpetuates inauthentic systems of life-denying values, which Nietzsche observes in harbingers of God's death as diverse as scientism, asceticism, and secularism.
My new book project, Nihilism and the Enigma of Subjectivity, will provide the first comprehensive history of the concept of nihilism. I will show that philosophical and cultural guises of nihilism share a common feature: an uncritical commitment to the PSR. Whether committed to the PSR's total application or to its theological grounding, these guises of nihilism generate hard problems of agency and value, resulting in practical disorientation. However, we can regain orientation by asking what conditions the possibility of PSR's use in the first place. I will argue that the PSR's precondition is the subjective standpoint, robustly conceived in logical, interpersonal, and historical terms. To this end, I will examine the apperceptive, intersubjective, and hermeneutic character of the subjective standpoint. My examination will provide analyses of self-consciousness, mutual recognition, and shared interpretation modelled on work by Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger, all of whom respond to Jacobi and/or Nietzsche, a fact that lacks a unified account in the secondary literature.
With a robust conception of subjectivity as the condition of the possibility of the PSR's use, we can see that a philosophical denial of agency and a cultural deadening of values both exhibit the performative contradiction of disavowing the very standpoint on which philosophy and culture depend.
2.2 Third Monograph
My third book will provide a genealogy of the concept of self-alienation in continental philosophy. I will begin with Kant’s account of how human reason naturally obscures its own theoretical and practical laws, thereby yielding dogmatic metaphysical systems and depraved moral positions. I will then trace the post-Kantian development of this phenomenon—from Fichte’s and Hegel’s idealist accounts of the logical and ethical consequences of consciousness’s tendency to disown its role in shaping the world, to Husserl and Heidegger’s phenomenological accounts of the modern individual’s evasion of its interest in and responsibility for scientific programs and social structures. I will arrive at Beauvoir’s and Fanon’s existentialist accounts of bad faith as wilful denial from one’s freedom, a form of self-effacement that perpetuates systems of oppression including patriarchy and colonialism. I will argue that existentialism offers the most comprehensive picture of the nature and extent of self-alienation, with which philosophy still must reckon.