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 be authentic or to be inauthentic?  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. 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 the question of what it is for us to direct our own lives. Against the Kantian idea that practical self-direction is autonomy, I argue that practical self-direction is authenticity, being true to oneself by being imaginatively responsive to the world. Drawing on Kierkegaard's arguments against autonomy as the principle of self-conscious agency and his writing on despair, the self, and faith, I build a case for the idea that we are committed to being authentic just in virtue of being self-conscious actors.