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Education:
- B.A., George Mason University
- M.A., The University of Memphis
- Dissertation Research Fellow, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany
- Dissertation Research Fellow, Philipps-Universität, Marburg, Germany
- Ph.D., Emory University
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Recent Publications:
- Kant's Organicism: Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013).
- "Intuition and Nature in Kant and Goethe," European Journal of Philosophy Vol. 19:3, Fall 2011.
- “Understanding Affinity: Locke on Generation and the Task of Classification,” Locke Studies Vol. 11, Fall 2011: 49-71.
- "Material Unity and Natural Organism in Locke, " Idealistic Studies Vol. 40, No. 1-2, Fall 2010.
- “‘The Key to All Metaphysics’: Kant’s Letter to Herz, 1772” Kantian Review Vol. 13, Fall 2007.
- Review of Kant’s System of Nature and Freedom: Selected Essays by Paul Guyer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, http://ndpr.nd.edu, Summer, 2006.
- “Kant and the Problem of Idealism: On the Significance of the Göttingen Review,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 44, No. 2, Summer 2006.
- “Morality and Politics in Kant’s Philosophy of History” in Toward Greater Human Solidarity: Options for a Plural World, ed. Anindita Balslev (Kolkata: Dasgupta & Co, PVT. Ltd, 2005).
- “Between Sense and Thought: Synthesis in Kant’s Deductions,” Epoché. A Journal of the History of Philosophy, Vol. 10, No. 1, Fall 2005.
- “Kant on Truth,” Idealistic Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2, Fall 2004.
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Current Projects:
I have recently completed a book on Kant and the life sciences, Kant’s Organicism. Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy, where I traced the role played by embryological debates for Kant’s account of the generation of ideas and the epigenesis of Reason itself. My current projects include articles on Kant’s practical philosophy and on the Critique of Judgment, and a monograph investigating the turn to racial difference as a means for understanding both generation and heredity between the 17th- and 19th-centuries, Heredity and Race. Historical Contributions to the Science of Race from Maupertuis to Darwin.
Upcoming Courses:
Spring 2011:
- PHIL 502: Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
This course will offer a close reading of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. The first Critique appeared in the Spring of 1781 and was immediately attacked for embracing variously the skepticism of Hume and the idealism of Berkeley. Stung by his critics, Kant took the opportunity for a second edition to rewrite central portions of his argument; the publication in 1787 of this “B-edition” sparked scholarly debates that continue to this day. Our goal in this class will be to gain a solid grasp of Kant’s epistemic project as it develops from Kant’s initial attempts to redefine metaphysics as a “science of limits” in the 1760s to his fully developed account of the limits and extent of reason in 1787.
- PHIL 103: Introduction to Ethics (Writing Intensive)
This semester we are going to examine different traditions within the history of ethics with the aim of providing a good, first grounding in basic moral theory. The readings chosen for the course will present us with a variety of perspectives from which we will draw our weekly discussions—Aristotle, Epictetus, Boethius, Hume, Kant, Mill, and Nietzsche—and the focus throughout will be on the ongoing attempt to reconcile conduct and character when discussing the basis of morality.
Fall 2011:
- PHIL 474: Kant’s Practical Philosophy
This course will be devoted to a comprehensive review of Kant’s practical philosophy. As an introduction to Kant’s technical understanding of the roles assigned to “Providence” and “Reason,” the course will open with some shorter essays meant to establish the relationship between reason and history. From that point we will concentrate on each of the major ethical and social and political works written by Kant in the 1780s and ’90s. Special attention will be paid to Kant’s developing understanding of the relationship between freedom and law, and the consequences this will have when connecting reason and nature both from Kant’s own perspective, and from those of his German Idealist successors.
- STS/HIST 428: The Darwinian Revolution
Although Darwin’s name is present everywhere in church and state debates regarding the teaching of evolutionary theory, few people have actually read any Darwin for themselves. By way of introduction, the course will open with two biographical accounts: Janet Browne’s biography of the Origin, and Darwin’s own autobiography. By the end of this semester you will be fully versed in Darwin’s theories of natural and sexual selection, and you should have a good idea of the exciting developments and remaining challenges facing contemporary evolutionary theory in terms of taxonomy, evo-devo, and the new science surrounding epigenetics.
Spring 2012:
- PHIL 473: German Idealism
German Idealism coalesced in the 1790s as a concerted effort on the part of some of its main “players” during that decade—the Schlegel brothers, Hölderlin, and Schelling—to break free of Enlightenment thinking, and above all of the methodological approach taken by Immanuel Kant, in order to establish an entirely new set of grounds for philosophy. Kant’s critical system had been dominated by the issues of nature, freedom, and art and his German Idealist successors worked, therefore, to redefine these issues without recourse to the presuppositions and limits set by Kant with respect to cognition and its objects. While this yielded individual studies devoted to nature and freedom, these independent lines of inquiry intersected in the study of art. Starting from Kant’s provocative suggestions regarding the parallels existing between artistic productions and organic life in the Critique of Judgment (1790), the German Idealist thinkers turned to art as the paradigmatic site of possibility for both rethinking the connections between freedom and nature, and establishing the new methodological approach that this rethinking would require. In order to provide some historical background to the state of aesthetic theory as the German Idealists would have come to know it, the course begins with time devoted to the classic accounts established by Winkelmann, Lessing, and Schiller before taking up specific works by Schlegel, Hölderlin, and Schelling.
- STS/HIST 124: History of Medicine
The manner in which a society understands and treats health and illness reveals not only the state of that society’s knowledge, it reflects its values, ideals, governing assumptions, and social hierarchies. This course serves as an introduction to the history of medicine in the Western world viewed from this broad perspective. We will examine major developments in the understanding of health, illness, medical treatment, and medical practice from ancient times to the present. Relying on both primary and secondary sources, the course will explore such themes as the changing status of medical practitioners, the experience of patients in different historical settings, artistic depictions of illness and healing, and the increasingly prominent role of medicine in public policy in order to better understand the links between medicine and its social, cultural, intellectual, and political contexts.
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