Current Research

My current projects focus primarily on Hegel’s theories of self-consciousness and perception, the role of art in human life, and Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophy of mind.

You can click here to see a video of me talking about Hegel’s critique of Schelling’s theory of intuition at a 2021 session of the Vanderbilt Modern Philosophy group. Look below for further information on recent work and works in progress.

Book Project:

Hegelian Intuitions – I propose a new way forward for mind-centered readings of Hegel’s theoretical philosophy that focuses on Hegel’s transformation of Kant’s theory of intuition. The manuscript expands on work begun in my dissertation project, “The Self-Exhibition of Reason: Hegel on Intuition and Logical Content.” The Introduction to the dissertation is available here and the abstract is just below.

Dissertation Abstract:

My dissertation offers a new account of Hegel’s reception of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. I argue that one of Hegel’s most significant philosophical contributions is his articulation of a post-Kantian account of the relationship between form and content in acts of a priori judgment. In this context, I call into question the common assumption that Hegel rejects Kant’s claim that intuition contributes to a priori cognition. Instead, I argue that the crucial disagreement between the two thinkers is over what kinds of objects are available to be intuited in the first place. For Kant, the paradigmatic objects of intuition are natural phenomena. For Hegel as I read him, the paradigmatic objects of intuition are acts of self-conscious thinking like theoretical and practical judgments. I demonstrate how this disagreement with Kant has global ramifications for Hegel’s thought by tracking it across all three volumes of Hegel’s mature Encyclopedia project, with emphasis on the formal account of the logical “I” developed in the Science of Logic.

Papers in Preparation:

“How to Acquire the World: Hegel’s Pragmatic Theory of Figurative Synthesis and Kant’s Doctrine of Right” — This paper examines the role that Kant’s Doctrine of Right account of how we come to have a priori possession of physical objects plays in the theory of empirical concept formation that Hegel lays out in the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit.

“Logical Content and the Exhibition of Conceptual Reality in Hegel’s Science of Logic”— Hegel famously rejects Kant’s claim from the Critique of Pure Reason that space and time, the Kantian forms of intuition, provide content for synthetic a priori judgments. Hegel argues instead that a priori concepts give themselves content. The mechanism by which this content is provided is poorly understood and remains a point of deep contention in the literature. Two potential sources have been defended most frequently: intellectual intuition and intuitive intellection. Here, I reject both of these and argue for a novel third option, symbolic intuition, by drawing on resources in Kant’s Critique of Judgment.

“Hegel’s Mature Critique of Schelling”—I argue that, contrary to common understanding, one of Hegel’s key inheritances from Schelling can be found in his theory of intuition. Scholarship in this area has rightly focused on Hegel’s rejection of Schelling’s theory of intellectual intuition. On my reading, however, this is not the end of the story. I propose that Hegel takes on a different sort of intuition endorsed by Schelling: namely, a variety of symbolic intuition that is derived from Kant’s account of aesthetic judgment in his third Critique. I further argue that, whereas Schelling is content to stick with Kant in arrogating symbolic intuition to the arena of fine art, Hegel proposes to go further by importing this aesthetic form into the realm of logic.