My interests lie in the areas of moral philosophy and its history, the philosophy of mind, and political philosophy. I am developing a broadly Stoic theory of morality and the good life, on which moral virtue is the foundation of living well. The core of this account is a conception of human agency as essentially aimed at the intersubjective good of recognition or acknowledgment of others. Recently I have begun to work on the implications of the view for political and legal institutions.

I view teaching as a way to share my core interests, explore their connections to other issues in philosophy, and find out what other people have to say about them. I have taught a graduate seminar on conceptions of well-being and their role in moral theory and upper level courses on ethical theory and philosophy of the self. Like a good Stoic, I think a lot of unethical behavior stems from not thinking clearly about what is truly important in life, and I bring this outlook to the courses I teach in applied ethics, where I encourage students to think about the broader implications of moral decisions in professional contexts. Whenever possible, I discuss movies and novels in my courses, because I love them and think a person's character is best understood in an accurate narrative of his or her life.

Click here for my CV and some of my work.