Research

My scholarship on Kant centers on Kant's theology. I am developing a "theology-first" reading of Kant's critique of rationalist metaphysics in the Transcendental Dialectic. The theology-first reading focuses on Kant's critique of theology as paradigmatic of the overall critique of rationalist metaphysics, and foundational relative to the other disciplines of special metaphysics (rational psychology, rational cosmology). It presents an alternative to the common 'PSR-unificationist' approach to the Dialectic, according to which the Dialectic contains three instances of a misuse of the explanatory Supreme Principle (sometimes associated with the PSR). Articles from this project are currently in progress and under review. I also work on a number of side projects related to comprehensively reconstructing Kant's theological views; some of these have been published. 

In progress:

• Paper on the Critical fate of Kant's 'possibility proof' for the existence of God (under review)

• Paper on the Logical Maxim and the Unconditioned (under review)

• Paper on the relationship between the Supreme Principle and the Principle of Complete Determination (under review)

• Paper on Kant's views on divine creation (under review)

• Paper on the role of the PSR in Kant's Dialectic

• Paper on explaining error (joint work with Chris Benzenberg)

n.b. feel free to email me for drafts of anything forthcoming or currently under review

Complete:

“Kant on Rational Reference: Theology as transcendental philosophy", European Journal of Philosophy, forthcoming

The Critical Kant famously held that our cognition requires intuition, or essentially singular representation. Kant is also often understood as taking a dismissive attitude toward his rationalist predecessors’ accounts of how we cognize singulars or individuals. In this paper, I provide a new reconstruction of Kant’s account of rationalist complete concepts, which are central to the rationalist account of referring to and thus cognizing singulars. I argue that Kant took his predecessors to closely approach a viable account of cognizing singulars. The rationalist’s idea of God has an important role within this account: the idea of God grounds the possibility of the rationalist’s cognition of singulars. This, I argue, shows that Kant takes rational theology to perform a central function of transcendental philosophy, within the systems of his predecessors. Finally, I explain how this reading of rational singularity suggests a new understanding of Kant’s account of reason. Reason is sophisticated, or naturally sensitive to the problem of how our representations can be about objects, rather than naïve, or naturally assuming that our representations simply do match up to objects.

“Grounding the Highest Good: the omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God of Kant's moral argument”, Kant-Studien, forthcoming; 2.5-page precis

Kant claims that his moral arguments for faith in God’s existence secure faith in a being with traditional divine properties including omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence. However, it is unclear how Kant’s moral arguments attain this result. This paper presents a new interpretation of Kant’s moral arguments, the ‘grounding interpretation,’ which shows why moral faith concerns a being with the traditional divine omni-properties. It argues for a connection between moral faith and a metaphysical conception of God as the ground of possibility. While that conception has previously been associated with Kant’s theoretical philosophy, Kant’s moral arguments supply it with both a practical justification and a practical interpretation. Recognizing this point enables us to understand why Kant holds that the God of moral faith has the traditional divine properties.

The Totality of the Thinkable, dissertation (completed 2023)

Five chapters on the theological and epistemological views of Immanuel Kant and related themes within contemporary epistemology. Each of the five chapters addresses a discrete problem related to the idea of the totality of the thinkable, or the idea of a totality of possible concepts. Taken together, these chapters constitute a unified argument that variants of both historical and contemporary 'rationalism' have tacitly appealed to an idea of the totality of the thinkable in a way that raises philosophical problems. 

The first four chapters of the dissertation explore the way the idea of totality of the thinkable is implicated in Kant’s criticisms of his German rationalist predecessors. These chapters argue that, according to Kant, this idea forms part of a distinctive kind of self-deception through which the mind mis-represents its relationship to reality. Connections to Kant's moral philosophy and Kant's views on Spinoza are also explored. The fifth chapter adapts a version of Kant’s criticisms to apply to appeals to ideal reasoners within contemporary epistemology. 

“Kant’s Critical Theory of the Best Possible World”, Kantian Review (2020)

Argues that in the Critical Period, Kant continues to endorse the view that God creates the best possible world; presents an interpretation of what Kant thinks it is for a world to be best-possible according to which best possible worlds are infinite in value.

My contemporary work is focused on the effort to defend, within the scope of analytic philosophy, a set of positions we might call 'Foucauldian.' The animating spirit behind this work is Foucault's (in)famous remark that he "writes in order to have no face." I read Foucault as suggesting that there's something about being and becoming a knowable person that is nasty business--but what, exactly? The articles in this series address this question. In doing so, I seek to recover the darker sides of liberal ideals (autonomy, intelligibility) and broadly leftist ideals (recognition, epistemic justice)."Over-Intelligibility" is the first article from this series to be published, and I am currently at work on sequel pieces. Once I finish a few pieces within this series, I hope to explore how certain theological ideas inform the positions that this series puts forward.

In progress:

• "Alienated Autonomy", on liberal theories of autonomy

• "Dirty Power", on taking pleasure in subjugation

Complete:

"Over-Intelligibility", Political Philosophy (2025)

Contemporary philosophers have argued that framing new concepts can bring about both moral and epistemic progress. In this paper, I argue that such intelligibility has downsides. This paper introduces the phenomenon of 'over-intelligibility,' which obtains when a concept truly applies and facilitates understanding, yet hinders someone as a knower. This takes place when concepts normalize or detrimentally standardize our epistemic lives.