Research

My active research projects divide into three broad categories:

I. Kant and Post-Kantian Philosophy

I am interested in (1) Kant's foundational arguments for the bindingness of morality and the reality of freedom as well as (2) the early reception of these arguments (in the work of Reinhold, Maimon, and Creuzer) and (3) their critical transformation (in the work of Fichte, Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel). This project has the very ambitious undertaking of presenting freedom as a power of self-determination that precludes alternate possibilities (commonly known as leeway freedom) and rejecting 'constructivist' or 'constitutivist' proofs of the moral law's validity on the basis of non-moral premises. The project carries historical significance for rethinking the history of ethics after Kant, and also systematic significance for rethinking contemporary debates over the 'sources of normativity' and their justification.

II. Romanticism—German and British

I am interested in the traditions of Romanticism in both Germany and England, with a focus on the conceptual underpinnings of Romantic theories of poetry, symbol, and mythology, which I take to be motivated by demands internal to broadly post-Kantian demands of systematicity. I have particular interests in Blake, Hölderlin, Novalis, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, as I see their creative writing as a new medium for ideas they find ill-suited to traditional philosophy. Within this line of research I am also interested in how classical theological problems are reoriented within literary genres such as tragedy, but in ways that are meant to carry a force akin to (but still distinct from) philosophical proof. A related project concerns tracing the impact of Goethe's Faust on late Romantic philosophy and literature.

III. Global Philosophy and Non-Western Philosophy in Reception

I am interested in understanding the reception histories of non-Western philosophy in Europe, with a focus on classical Sanskrit doctrines belonging to ancient Indian traditions. Related to this project is the question of how Global philosophy is possible and how the discipline of philosophy can expand its boarders beyond the established canon. I take this to be a challenge to articulate the foundations of intercultural philosophy. But I think that answering this challenge requires addressing a longstanding intracultural problem of privileging philosophical modes of thought over non-philosophical modes, such as what we find within the traditions of European art, literature, and myth. Working on the intersections of philosophy and literature (or religion, or mythology) is thus an opportunity to expand the scope of philosophy itself.