My research examines human beings and scientific understanding from a hermeneutic-philosophical perspective. I believe in the value of ontological inquiry for practically focused scientific research, and accordingly I aim to bring contemporary research in the natural and human sciences into closer conversation with modern hermeneutic philosophy.
Since the eighteenth century, hermeneutic philosophers have argued that scientific understanding is necessarily founded upon the basic “fore-structure” of human understanding as a whole, i.e., the socially- and historically situated “pre-understanding” which frames everyday human reasoning. Our understanding of the world is achieved only on the basis of an interpretive context which prefigures the way we derive and assign meaning, and accordingly it is essential to the pursuit of understanding itself that we turn reflexively on this context and interpret our basic “hermeneutic situation.”
In my current research, I am studying the value of hermeneutic philosophy for historical research in the humanities and social sciences. This focus is consistent across three different directions:
- Dissertation research (successfully defended in spring 2024): My dissertation project examines Friedrich Nietzsche and Wilhelm Dilthey’s cross-disciplinary uses of the concept of “life” and efforts to reframe scientific knowledge from the perspective of life. I argue that the standard life-philosophical reading of Nietzsche and Dilthey fails to represent these thinkers’ efforts to represent the singular hermeneutic situation that is in question with all scientific research, and therefore the value of Nietzsche and Dilthey’s writings for philosophical inquiry about scientific reasoning.
- Fulbright research (September 2022-July 2023): During the academic year of 2022-2023 I was a guest researcher at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum/Research Center for Classical German Philosophy (Das Forschungszentrum für Klassische Deutsche Philosophie) in Bochum, Germany. I spent this time researching the history of industrialism in Germany, and studying the ways that the history of industrialism intersects with the history of philosophical thinking about technology and progress. In particular, I examined classical German philosophers’ commentaries on the modern research university and the importance of these commentaries for modern scientific research.
- In-progress research articles: I am currently working on several research articles which concern the value of hermeneutic philosophy for contemporary scientific research. In particular, I am drawing on the writings of Wilhelm Dilthey, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Michel Foucault, Achille Mbembe and many others.
Below are a list of my recent publications and presentations:
PUBLICATIONS:
“Rereading Nietzsche with Philosophical Hermeneutics: ‘Life’ as the ‘Hermeneutic Situation’.” Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy, Vol. 28, No. 2 (2024) (winner of Hans-Georg Gadamer essay prize (North American Society for Philosophical Hermeneutics).
“Prolegomena to Any Future Historicizing: The Dilthey-Husserl Debate and Why It Matters for Critical Phenomenology.” Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2021): 107-126.
“Lebensphilosophie and the Task of Interpreting Philosophy Historically.” Sociedad Castellano-Leonesa De Filosofía (SCLF): “Filosofía y Experiencia de la Vida”, XXVIII Encuentro Internacional. Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca (2021).
UNDER REVIEW:
“Lebensphilosophie Before the 19th Century The Influence of Early Life Philosophy on Classical German Philosophy”.
BOOK REVIEWS:
“Review of Church’s Nietzsche’s Unfashionable Observations: A Critical Introduction and Guide.” New Nietzsche Studies, Volume 12 (2023) (forthcoming).
“Review of Ferro’s Masters, Slaves and Philosophers: Plato, Hegel and Nietzsche on Freedom and the Pursuit of Knowledge”. Hegel-Studien, Band 56 (2022): 169-174.
PRESENTATIONS:
“The Idea of a “Philosophical Anthropology” and its Relevance for the Future of the Humanities: Scheler, Ricoeur, Gadamer.” International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences (CIPSH): Hermeneutical Rationality and the Future of the Humanities, November 2024 (forthcoming). University of Coimbra: Coimbra, Portugal (online presentation).
“Gadamer and Lebensphilosophie: Reconceptualizing Historical Science as Being with the Dead.” Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) Annual Conference, September 2024. Rochester Institute of Technology: Rochester, New York.
“Pseudo-Historicity: Nietzsche, Mbembe, and the Crisis of Historicism,” Humanities Workshop in “Present and Crisis,” July 20th, 2024 (forthcoming). a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities, Cologne, Germany.
“Nietzsche and the Politics of the Historical Dead.” Invited Guest Speaker: Fordham Social & Political Philosophy Workshop, February 6th, 2024. Fordham University: New York, New York.
“Dilthey’s Hermeneutics of the Living and the Dead: Rereading Dilthey on “Historical Consciousness” and “Religious Experience”.” Wilhelm Dilthey and Historical Consciousness International Conference, November 2-3, 2023. Royal Holloway: London, UK (Online Conference).
“Rereading Nietzsche with Philosophical Hermeneutics: “Life” as the “Hermeneutic Situation”.” North American Society for Philosophical Hermeneutics (NASPH), September 21st, 2023. University of Calgary: Alberta, Canada.
“Lebensphilosophie Before the University of Berlin: The Influence of Early Life Philosophy on Classical German Philosophy”. Keynote Address & Guest Researcher Presentation, Forschungszentrum für Klassische Deutsche Philosophie / Hegel-Archiv: Forschungskolloquium, May 9th, 2023. Ruhr-Universität Bochum: Bochum, Germany.
“Lebensphilosophie Before and After the University of Berlin; or the Attempt at a Living Conception of Time.” Weekly Colloquium for Early Career Researchers: Controversies and Crises in German Philosophy 1860-1914, October 2022. Online-Kolloquium der Forscher: Deutschland/Europa/Nordamerika.
“The Technologization of Life and Lebensphilosophie.” KU Leuven, Working Group on Philosophy of Technology, September 2022. University of Leuven: Leuven, Belgium.
“Nietzsche and Dilthey: Reconsidering Life Philosophy and Historical Science.” Congreso de la SCLF XXVIII, October 2021. Universidad de Salamanca: Salamanca, Spain. (online presentation)
“The Anachronistic Character of Time and What it Means for History and Politics.” Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) Annual Conference, September 2021. (online presentation)
“Nietzsche, Dilthey, and the Lebensphilosophie shift in perspective on life and history.” Warwick Continental Philosophy Conference, March 2021. (online presentation)
“The Past that Lies in Front of Us: Nietzsche on Historical Science and the Oracular Voice of the Past.” NYC Nietzsche Colloquium, April 2020. Fordham University: New York, New York. (online presentation)
“Foucault in 1970-1971: History at the Limits of the Will to Know.” Collegium Phaenomenologicum Participants Conference, July 2019. Hotel Le Mura: Città di Castello, Italy.
“On the Sociopolitical Dimension of Date-Relations: Derrida and the Czech Monument Tank No. 23.” Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle (CCPC) Annual Meeting, May 2019. Leiden University: Leiden, Netherlands.
——, UMass Amherst Graduate History Association Conference “The Routes of History”, March 2019. University of Massachusetts Amherst: Amherst, Massachusetts.
——, UK PGSA Conference on Social and Political Philosophy, March 2019. University of Kentucky: Lexington, Kentucky.
“The Unhistoricality of the Presocratic Philosophers.” Fordham Philosophy: First Philosophy Seminar Symposium, December 2018. Fordham University: New York, New York.
“Nietzsche in 1886: The Will to Health as a Willingness to Displacement”. NYC Nietzsche Colloquium, October 2018. Fordham University: New York, New York.
“Foucault’s Relationship to the Self and the Possibility of Biopower from Below.” Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) Annual Conference, October 2018. Penn State University: State College, Pennsylvania.
“Affective Labor as Resistance in the Biopolitical Society.” philoSOPHIA: Society for Continental Feminism, March 2018. University of Richmond: Richmond, Virginia.
“On the Efficacy of Foucault and Kant’s Critiques of the A Priori Conditions of Knowledge.” Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy (CSCP) Annual Congressional Conference, September 2017. Ryerson University: Toronto, Canada.
“Deleuze and the Nomadic, Post-Oedipal Imagination.” Red Star Line Conference, August, 2017. University of Antwerp: Antwerp, Belgium.
“Heidegger on schweigen/verschwiegenheit: Dasein and Keeping Silent in Being and Time and the ‘Black Notebooks’.” Heidegger Seminar Symposium, May 2017. Fordham University: New York, New York.
“Deleuze’s Masochism and Nietzsche’s Genealogy.” Fordham Philosophical Society Graduate Colloquium, October 2016. Fordham University: New York, New York.