Research

My research interest lies mostly in moral psychology and metaethics. However, I like to think about these topics with others, including thinkers that are part of the history of philosophy and, especially, Kant. My PhD thesis, provisionally titled ‘Between Persons‘, focuses on the interpersonal dimension of Kant’s practical philosophy. Beyond and apart from my doctoral research, I also spend time thinking about value and our relation to it as rational agents. So my research falls into three broad categories: Kantian ethics, value and practical reason. You can listen to me talk about my different research projects here.

Kant:

In my PhD, I am looking into how Kant’s notion of the ‘unity of will’ can shed light on many morally relevant ways in which we relate to one another. I am working on four different papers. The first one looks at Kant’s ‘legal’ worries about sexual interactions and how the ‘unity of will’ is meant to help overcome them. The second paper discusses loneliness, and what we can learn from Kant about it. In the last two papers, I defend Kant’s ‘union view’ of love and friendship against challenges raised by ‘Robust-Concern’ theories.

Beyond the topics of my doctoral research, I am also interested in Kant’s metaethics. I think that, despite being tempting, it is wrong to read Kant as a constructivist. Instead, I suggest, we should read Kant as a particular form of metaethical realist.

Value:

I am interested in the nature of ‘final value’ and what sorts of things can be valuable ‘for their own sake’.  In this area, I have recently published a paper in Philosophical Studies arguing that the debate on final value, with Moorean intrinsicalists on one side and Korsgaardean conditionalists on the other, should be re-cast using more fine-grained relations of metaphysical dependence. Apart from this project, I have also been thinking about what might be special about intrinsic value, as G E Moore understood it.

Reasons:

Another interest of mine is reasons for action. I am currently working on a hybrid theory of reasons that can fare better than traditional objectivist and subjectivist theories. The possibility of going hybrid has not been popular in contemporary metaethics, but it has been attempted in the past. Part of my motivation to work on a hybrid theory of reasons comes from Francisco Suarez’s effort to find a mid-way position between voluntarism and naturalism about Natural Law in the late middle ages. 

Aside from these topics in moral psychology and metaethics, I have worked on many figures in the history of philosophy – many of which have influenced my current work. Beyond Kant, I worked on Aristotle, St Thomas Aquinas, Francisco Suarez, Hobbes, Rousseau and Marx. From this historical work, three publications and a few conference presentations resulted.