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 as foundational relative to the other disciplines of special metaphysics (rational psychology, rational cosmology). It presents an alternative to the common 'SP-Unificationist' approach to the Dialectic, according to which the Dialectic focuses on the misuse of the explanatory Supreme Principle (sometimes associated with the PSR). 

My work on Kant's theology has motivated a new project on the limitations of the recently scholarly trend toward 'pan-metaphysical' readings of Kant. These readings emphasize continuity across the Critical Kant, Leibniz and Wolff, and post-Kripkean modal metaphysics and epistemology. The central concern is that the pan-metaphysical approach risks failing to take metaphysics sufficiently seriously, by blending together incompatible approaches to metaphysical theorizing. I am currently at work on a number of papers that use this question as the basis for recovering a metaphysical Kant who is not 'pan-metaphysical' but rather distinctly Kantian. These approaches are contrasted in the paper on Kant's 'possibility proof' and its Critical fate.

In progress:

Feel free to email me for drafts of anything forthcoming or currently under review. 

• Paper on the Critical fate of Kant's 'possibility proof' for the existence of God (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 Supreme Principle in Kant's Dialectic that argues against 'SP-Unificationism' and proposes a new account of the unity of the Dialectic (under review)

• Paper on the Logical Maxim and the Unconditioned

• Paper on the argument strategy of the Transcendental Ideal

• Paper on subsumption in the Schematism

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

Complete:

Several of these articles have associated summaries. They're intended for anyone who wants a 10-15 minute account of what the article does. 

“Kant on Rational Reference: Theology as transcendental philosophy", European Journal of Philosophy, (2026); summary

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 (2026); summary

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 started with an effort to defend, within the scope of analytic philosophy, a set of positions we might call Foucauldian. This work seeks to recover the darker side of liberal ideals (autonomy, intelligibility) and of 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 a second article entitled "Alienated Autonomy." 

This Foucauldian series motivates the question of how to spell out the foundational notions of 'intelligibility' and 'autonomy' (both of which are also central concerns of German Idealist social and political thought). In "Taking Deontology Seriously", I argue that in order to spell out either of these notions in the way required by German Idealist normative theory, one must reject a number of popular contemporary approaches to theorizing modality and the (much-maligned) a priori, in favor of reviving Kant's own metaphysics and epistemology in the first Critique. Modal metaphysics, modal epistemology, and normative theory are a 'package deal', such that any substantive commitments in one area entail substantive commitments in the other two. If Kantian deontology is incompatible with widespread views within modal metaphysics, we might say, so much the worse for Kantian deontology (e.g. Williamson 2025, Good as Usual). However, I argue that if normative theory is a substantive enterprise, we have very good reason to instead reject the widespread views within modal metaphysics—whatever morality may be, it's not a technicality.

In progress:

• "Alienated Autonomy", on liberal theories of autonomy (under review)

• "Taking Deontology Seriously", on why the Kantian deontologist has a killer modus tollens against Kripke

• "Risky Recognition", on the gamble of social relations

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.