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 (Early Modern, Kantian, Post-Kantian). My undergraduate degree is from Yale in Philosophy and English.

I'm interested in questions like, what is it to feel at home with oneself, or to feel alienated from oneself?  What is it to want something, and what is it that we really want? And why do we care about things like feeling understood, or worry about whether it is possible to really understand someone, or be understood by them?

My recent work includes a published essay on the Cartesian passions and an essay under review about the nature of desire and Kantian ethics. 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 despair in modern life.

My dissertation considers what it is to want, desire, or take an interest in something—for example, to be drawn to a career, a way of life, or a relationship with a particular person. I argue that desiring is neither a projection of interest nor a perception of reasons, but a free, imaginative activity similar to considering a work of art. It is our effort to see things as reasons-giving for us, and its main constitutive principle is to avoid alienation by identifying with our reasons for action. To support this idea, I renovate the contemporary Kantian conception of the human agent by drawing upon the insights of the 19th-century discussion of dejection, a condition of lost vitality in which a person experiences his or her own self-consciousness as a burden that makes happiness appear impossible.