I am a PhD candidate in Harvard’s Philosophy department. I write about ethics and the philosophy of mind in addition to the history of modern philosophy. My undergraduate degree is from Yale in Philosophy and English.

The philosophical questions that most interest me concern ordinary, everyday aspects of the human condition—places we can get stuck in thinking about how to live, about what it is to face this task and what it means to manage it well.

My dissertation provides an original ethical interpretation of German and English Romanticism focused on the movement’s conception of the creative imagination. The Romantics understand this faculty to be our power to create works of art as well as our power to want, take an interest in, or desire something—for example, to be drawn to a career, a way of life, or a relationship with a particular person. They hence believe our desiring is neither a projection of interest onto the world nor a perception of reasons within it, but a creative imaginative response to it. The dissertation reconstructs this conception of the imagination, argues that it resolves a paradox about desiring that contemporary accounts face, and shows how it supports a distinctive ethic of responsive love. 

My other recent work includes a published article on the Cartesian passions and a series of articles under review or being prepared for review on themes related to my dissertation. I have a longstanding interest in the possibility of metaphysics, the nature of philosophy, and the relationship between philosophy and literature that I plan to channel into a book on love and despair in modern life.