Description of Current Teaching and Research Interests

Although I have a wide variety of teaching and research interests, most are motivated by the set of issues discussed below. Teaching and research interests are not distinguished here because, for me, these activities go hand in hand: Topics are more appealing to students when they are still live issues for the instructor, and the process of articulating themes in the classroom increases the clarity and depth of one’s scholarship. The focal point of my work is the nature of judgment – the manner in which we make determinations about various practical or theoretical phenomena through the application of principles – and the problem of intuition that it raises. Isn’t something inevitably added in the process of forming judgments, and if so, what is the nature of this addition and what puzzles does it raise for philosophical thought? Both Kant and Wittgenstein have argued that concepts and rules can never be defined specifically enough to guarantee their correct application. In fact, the amount of leeway granted to judgment tends to increase in cases that are complex or unfamiliar: For example, the formation of promising scientific hypotheses and the identification of the most effective solution to a political crisis each require an inventiveness that cannot be sufficiently stipulated by the goals and methods guiding such activities. Given the fact that some individuals are very insightful in cases like these and their success does not appear to be accidental, what does judgment add to the conceptual directive that it follows? If the guidance provided by principles is always indeterminate to one degree or another, how is judgment able to make up the difference in a productive and nonarbitrary manner? Traditionally, judgment is defined in contrast to the conceptual character of principles. But if judgment is an intuitive sense or ability, nondiscursive in nature, it lies beyond the scope of language and cannot be articulated. Intuitionism in its various forms appears to unduly constrain philosophical inquiry; and like Kant’s concept of the thing-in-itself, it generates a paradox by referring to something that is purportedly beyond the limits of thought. To avoid these problems, it is necessary to reexamine the nature of the intuition and its relationship to concepts. I argue that intuition is not nondiscursive and does not stand opposed to concepts, though it remains consistent with the possibility of novel judgments. If concepts always have some degree of indeterminacy, there is something irreducibly intuitive about our understanding of them. Similarly, intuition can be articulated to a far greater extent than we might expect: Experience, past decisions and training, and tacit inferences lie in the background of “instinctive” judgments. Despite the fact that inquiry often runs aground, I argue that no aspect of judgment is ineffable in principle. However, the indeterminacy of principles entails that there is always more to be said about judgment and the principles that guide it, and preserves the possibility of novel ideas and experiences that are not anticipated by these principles.

The issue of judgment and intuition is examined in my work on German idealism, 20^th century continental philosophy, moral particularism and continental ethics, and is in the background of many of my other interests, such as Heidegger’s concept of freedom, recent French philosophy, and objectivity and relativism. Despite the fact that the objectives and underlying assumptions of these two traditions are very different, many of the debates in German idealism and 20^th century continental philosophy revolve around the relationship of intuition and conceptual understanding. In German idealism, this is seen especially in the disagreements about the nature of our access to the absolute, such as the possibility of intellectual intuition and the coherence of Kant’s attempt to set limits for knowledge. The preeminence of the concept in Hegel, the intuition of the divine in Hamann, Jacobi, and Schleiermacher, and the dualism of intuition and concept in Kant have a great impact on their respective views about metaphysics, epistemology, and other philosophical issues. Schelling is often accused of maintaining an intuitionism like Hamann and others: Hegel famously characterizes Schelling’s notion of the absolute as “the night in which all cows are black,” and argues that it is not possible to have knowledge of something that is amorphous and lacks distinctions. But this is a misrepresentation of Schelling’s view. I argue that Schelling rejects the opposition between intuition and concept, and claims that the two are united in the idea. For him, the idea of the absolute has a certain degree of determinacy, though significantly less than in Hegel. Although I criticize Schelling’s philosophy of history for being too teleological, I argue that he offers significant resources for thematizing judgment and intuition, such as his analysis of the role of feeling, emotion, and longing (the dark ground) in rationality and aesthetic production, and avoids many of the problems that these issues raise for his contemporaries.

In 20^th century continental philosophy, figures such as Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, and Bergson share the view that thought is constituted by its relationship to something that exceeds it – the possibility of singular events that radically transform thought and experience. The irreducible finitude of human understanding results from the possibility of novelty because the latter, by definition, always stands beyond thought to some extent. Despite the emphasis on singularity and human finitude rather than the possibility of absolute knowledge, the issue of intuition is also prominent in the 20^th century: The various ways in which these figures thematize the notion of the beyond (e.g., futurity, alterity, the outside, the virtual, and memory) can be distinguished according to the relative significance of intuition and conceptual understanding. For example, although Derrida and Levinas have similar views about the radical alterity of the other, their justifications are very different because Derrida argues from the iterability of the concept and Levinas from the fecundity of the sensible. I argue that there are broad parallels between the debates in 19^th and 20^th century continental philosophy, a hidden legacy of German idealism that has far reaching implications. For instance, it is not an accident that Derrida, Deleuze, and Foucault, all students of Hegel via Hyppolite, privilege conceptual determinacy over intuition. In Heidegger I find the most promising resources for an attempt to rethink the relationship of intuition and conceptual understanding, due in part to his insight that intimation is essential to human understanding, and that language is more subtle and is open to richer possibilities than a mere set of concepts.

Like many 20^th century continental philosophers, moral particularists defend the possibility of novel events and argue that the uniqueness of these events is concealed when judgment relies too heavily on principles. Moral particularists take inspiration from Aristotle’s concept of phronesis and maintain that moral normativity is too complex to be captured in a manageable set of general principles. On their view, proper moral judgment consists in the intuition of particulars rather than the application of general principles; deliberation, justification, and debate are still possible, though they receive no assistance from moral principles. In “Aristotle, Moral Particularism, and the Indeterminacy of Principles,” I am critical of their intuitionism and the rejection of general moral principles to which it leads. Judgment is impossible without the guidance of some concept or rule, which provides the general orientation toward the phenomena being judged. Particularists assert the possibility of moral judgment, which presupposes basic normative categories such as ‘moral’ and ‘immoral’. Consequently, I argue that they are committed to a type of universal moral principle – an indeterminate principle like Heidegger’s concept of authenticity that says nothing about the moral status of particulars in order to avoid prejudicing our judgment of them. This suggests that the difference between moral particularism and universalist theories such as Kant’s ethics and utilitarianism is a difference in degree and not in kind: It is not the case that one view rejects general moral principles and the other embraces them; rather, they are distinguished by the degrees of determinacy found in their principles. Even the principles defended by moral universalists have some indeterminacy, providing leeway to moral judgment, for example, in the adjudication of conflicting or competing duties. Moral theories such as Aristotelian virtue ethics and Ross’ ethical pluralism fall somewhere in the middle because their principles are even more indeterminate.

This revised form of moral particularism helps to clarify the conception of ethics found in 20^th century continental philosophers such as Levinas, Derrida, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Foucault, and Deleuze. Seen in this light, it is possible to demonstrate the plausibility of an ethics that grants a great deal of leeway to moral judgment. Particularism also raises interesting questions about role of judgment in a social and political context and the relative determinacy of the principles found in political and legal systems. One way in which this topic can be broached is through the issue of judicial latitude, considering, in light of three-strikes and other mandatory sentencing laws, how much leeway a judge needs in order to deliver an appropriate verdict. Is justice best served by neutralizing the idiosyncrasies of individual judges and administrators? Or by doing so are we shirking our responsibility to carefully consider the merits of each individual case? Particularism is also has relevance for other issues such as the judgment of sensory particulars, the application of scientific laws, and aesthetic judgment. In my work, I have examined its implications for freedom, objectivity, and group identity.

Another significant feature of the concept of judgment associated with particularism is that it opens the possibility of articulating a position in between traditional dichotomies such as freedom and necessity, objectivity and relativism, as well as identity and difference. For me, the most interesting and difficult questions are disclosed by identifying and negotiating this middle space. In most of my work on Heidegger and recent French philosophy, the relationship of freedom and necessity is the guiding issue. My dissertation examines the development of Heidegger’s concept of freedom; I argue that, from Being and Time on, the unity of freedom and necessity is a guiding theme in Heidegger’s thought. For Heidegger, freedom can only be understood in relation to the world of possibilities that Dasein is thrown into, possibilities that ‘give shape’ to freedom by constraining and obligating, and opening opportunities for decision. Through the indeterminate principle of authenticity, Heidegger maintains a balance between freedom and necessity: Dasein finds itself in the uncanny position of being obligated to act authentically while lacking specific guidelines for doing this. In Heidegger’s later thought, the issue is reformulated as a question about the place of the human in the history of being. According to Heidegger, by thoughtfully engaging with the question of being, human beings can prepare the way for another beginning in the history of being; but if and when this shift will occur is beyond our control. The main project that I am working on presently is to extend and revise my dissertation into a book manuscript, provisionally entitled Freedom and the Bind: The Place of the Human in Heidegger’s Thought. I have recently been focusing on Heidegger’s later thought, writing papers on the concepts of historical decision, enownment (Ereignis), the open, the fourfold, singularity, and destiny, in order to more clearly articulate the relationship between the human and the history of being.

The issues of the relationship of freedom and necessity and the place of the human are also important in my work on recent French philosophy. For example, I am working on a project entitled “What Becomes of the Human after Humanism? Heidegger and the French Philosophy of Difference,” which examines the debate about humanism that was initiated with Heidegger’s response to Sartre in “The Letter on Humanism,” and contributed in many ways to the shift in postwar French philosophy from phenomenology and existentialism to structuralism and post-structuralism. While acknowledging the deep similarities between Heidegger and philosophers of difference such as Foucault, Deleuze, and Derrida, the main focus of the project is to examine the place of the human in the later Heidegger and French post-structuralism. Is the attempt to shift the focal point of philosophical thinking away from human consciousness, freedom, and subjectivity to impersonal forces such as affective drives, social and conceptual structures, and discursive practices – as seen in Foucault’s famous claims about the “death of man” – a response to humanism that is too extreme? Is there a place left in their thought for the human, and, if not, what are the ethical and political implications of such a position? A return to Heidegger is helpful because, though the later Heidegger was taken as an inspiration for French anti-humanism, there is still a substantive notion of the human being in his thought.

The various debates about objectivity and relativism are the topic of another project I am working on, entitled “The Specter of Relativism: Objectivity and the Possibility of Knowledge.” My initial interest in this topic arose due to the fact that continental philosophers are often accused of being relativists (e.g., Heidegger and Sartre’s supposed voluntarism; deconstruction and textual interpretation), and I wanted to show why, in most cases, this claim is misguided. The title of this project reflects the fact that the most common argument for objectivity (both cognitive or moral) is made by pointing out the paradoxes and negative consequences of relativism. The problem with this argument is that it overlooks the possibility of positions between objectivity and relativism, a problem that is compounded by the fact that the terms ‘objectivity’ and ‘relativism’ are often used in an ambiguous fashion. As a consequence, when continental philosophers criticize objectivity, it is falsely assumed that they must be arguing for a type of relativism. I attempt to identify the main characteristics of objectivity and relativism, both in the (more extreme) traditional versions and the moderate varieties that are prevalent in contemporary philosophy. Traditionally, objectivity is associated with standards or criteria that are clear and specific, and permanent in the sense of ahistorical and transcultural, which would allow one to assume a decontextualized, God’s-eye perspective. In contemporary philosophy, these characteristics are usually modified in order to make objectivity more plausible, replacing ontological criteria such as the laws of Newtonian physics and specific moral principles with less specific epistemic criteria such as a Rawlsian notion of rationality, allowing considerations of context, and adding a notion of incremental progress that still preserves the possibility of comparing the advancement of various cultures or historical periods. The traditional characteristics of relativism, found in the claim that every set of (individual or cultural) beliefs is equally valid, and that these sets of beliefs are completely incommensurable with one another, have been modified by some contemporary philosophers, resulting in the more moderate relativistic view that some sets of beliefs are as valid as any other, and that some aspects of the various sets of beliefs are incommensurable. The possibility of positions in between objectivity and relativism is evidenced by moral particularism. Moral particularists maintain that proper moral judgment is neither arbitrary nor equivocal, despite the fact that it is not guided by determinate moral principles and there can be no guarantee of moral progress. The continental critique of objectivity is based, in most cases, on a general particularism that rejects the notion of incremental progress toward an unchanging set of determinate criteria, because it asserts that, due to the complexity of each situation, there is always the possibility of a radical transformation in our beliefs. At the same time, incommensurability is rejected because it is through an openness to the other, through an engagement with the question of being, that the possibility of radical transformation is brought about.

The issue of access to the other leads to another project that I am working on, one that is less developed than the projects discussed above. This project consists in exploring the relationship of identity and difference through issues such as alterity, cultural particularity, and group identity. In each of these issues, there is often a rigid distinction made between identity and difference, and I want to examine whether the notion of an indeterminate universal makes it possible to think both of these concepts in unison with one another. Levinas, for example, argues that alterity must be understood as absolute otherness because anything less than this results in a reduction of the other to the same: The other becomes nothing more than an object to be studied and integrated into a larger body of knowledge. Similarly, debates about the nature of group identities (pertaining, for example, to culture, nationality, race, gender, class, and sexuality), are usually posed as a choice between options that are mutually exclusive, i.e., defining identity in terms of universal characteristics shared by all people (e.g., rational capacities or desires), group characteristics (e.g., language, behavior, or physical traits), and individual differences. Universalist and group conceptions of identity have both been criticized for “essentializing” identity by positing a static notion of human nature, femininity, ethnicity, etc. On the other hand, is it even possible to make sense of individual differences, or does the emphasis on difference lead invariably to an ineffable univocity, a “night in which all cows are black”? In this project, I want to explore whether it is in fact possible to articulate particularity by reconsidering the claim that universal, group, and individual characteristics are mutually exclusive ways of defining identity. Although we traditionally define objects in terms of a determinate essence that is shared by all things of a particular type, is it possible to make the accidental characteristics as central as the essential ones – and avoid devaluing the particular characteristics of a group or individual – by defining the essence in an indeterminate manner? Like an indeterminate moral principle such as Heidegger’s concept of authenticity, does an indeterminate essence not require much greater input from particulars in order for identity to take shape, and lead to a more malleable notion of identity like the one developed by Sartre? Similarly, contra Levinas, is it possible to respect the irreducible alterity of the other while maintaining some degree of access to the other? To reverse the question, how can one be responsible to the other and respect its alterity when it remains a void with which one lacks any familiarity or contact? I want to explore whether it is possible to articulate particularity while acknowledging that it is always to some degree concealed from us, examining the possibility of degrees of access to the other by developing resources in Schelling’s notions of the dark ground and the divine.

I will conclude by mentioning two other themes in my research and teaching that are related to the projects just described. The first is the shift from teleological to mechanistic causality that occurred at the beginning of the modern period in European thought. I raise this theme in my courses and my research in order to set a historical context for the shift from ancient and medieval to modern European philosophy (especially the modern tendency to provide more specific principles in ethics, physics, and metaphysics), the debate about free will and determinism, the displacing of the human in French anti-humanism and contemporary cognitive science, the development of modern science and technology, and debates about historical progress and the meaning of life. The second theme is the relative priority of practical and theoretical philosophy. One feature that most 20th century continental philosophers share with Kant and German Idealism and that distinguishes both of these groups from much of the Western tradition is that they subordinate the theoretical to the practical, with the consequence that metaphysical issues must always be grounded in an ethical or political framework. I discuss these issues in an article on Kant’s doctrine of the primacy of practical reason. In addition, the first chapter of Freedom and the Bind analyses Heidegger’s interpretation (and reversal) of the priority of the theoretical over the practical in Aristotle’s distinction between poiesis, praxis, and theoria in Books VI and X of the Nicomachean Ethics, which, in my view, is crucial for understanding Heidegger’s thought.