My writing focuses on ancient Greek philosophy and on the formulation of a progressive concept of tradition. I have taught philosophy at the University of Chicago, Princeton University, and the University of Pennsylvania, as well as through the Prison Teaching Initiative at the Garden State Youth Correctional Facility. I also served as a founder for a pilot academic outreach program for local High Schools run by Princeton’s Department of Philosophy.
My research examines how the natural world became an object of scientific inquiry, how philosophical and mathematical methods came to be the preferred tools to be applied to its study, and what that means for inquiry and understanding.
agchinoia, deduction, and explanation
Sometimes things just click. This paper offers a new understanding of how Aristotle thinks it is possible for someone to discover the explanatory middle term of a deduction and to do so by means of a fast, seemingly effortless, non-discursive process.
hyper hēmas, explanation, and dialectic
When should one dismiss an alternative idea or proposal out of hand? This paper examines when Aristotle thinks he cannot constructively engage with and criticize a rival proposal and investigates his principled criteria for dismissing a view completely.
Critical Review
Sattler carves a compelling path through intellectual history to Aristotle’s pivotal conceptual innovations of time and space required to bring them together in a general account of speed. Yet Aristotle himself does not seem compelled: time, not the relation between time and distance, remains his measure of motion. Sattler diagnoses a deep tension; I argue that the tension may not run quite so deep.
Lying is great when you know what you’re doing. The paper offers a non-naïve reading of Socrates’s commitment to the truth and in doing so sheds new light on the infamous conclusion of the Lesser Hippias.
Those who can’t do, teach (they say) – but do those who teach “make” anything? This paper unpacks Aristotle’s idea that teaching (didaskalia) is an exercise of productive understanding (technē) and thus a genuine case of production.
Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy
“Why should these truths be basic explainers and not others?” The paper argues that Aristotle theorized a procedure for answering this question and uses this account to shed new light on a notoriously vexed stretch of text in Aristotle’s natural science.
Conservatism often treats tradition like a museum piece: something that must be defended against change exactly as it is. I think this misses the point of why a tradition matters. Drawing on Aristotle’s concept of technē (craft, art, or technical knowledge), I think that a tradition is actually akin to a living skill passed down through generations. I use my athletic pastime, Swiss stone put to make that case. Read about it here:
AEON Magazine
Drawing on ideas from Aristotle and my experience with one of Switzerland’s national sports, the article challenges the assumption that tradition is inherently conservative, showing instead how it can be a vehicle of innovation.
Liftingstones.org
This lexicon entry brings together what had existed only in oral stories, archival records, local memories, and private collections to tell the full story of the Ybrig Stone: its origins, its legend, and its living legacy from myth to modern sport.