I work mainly in 19th-century European philosophy (especially Nietzsche), moral psychology, and ethics. My work in each of these areas explores how our psychological lives are formed and sustained, as well as how emotional experiences of various kinds can facilitate or hinder agency, self-formation, and flourishing.
I am Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at California State University, San Bernardino.
You can find a selection of my academic research here.
My book, The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche, presents a novel interpretation of Nietzschean nihilism as life-denial. There, I pay special attention to nihilism as a psychological (specifically, affective) phenomenon, arguing that we cannot understand Nietzsche's diagnosis of nihilism without attending to this psychological dimension.
You can find an NDPR review of the book here. I was also interviewed by the LA Review of Books about this project.
I also write public philosophy: see this essay on loneliness in Aeon and this essay on nihilism in Psyche.
Philosophy has long helped to make my life and world more intelligible, to help me recognize (and attempt to embrace) limits to that intelligibility, and to bring into clearer focus both the self I aspire to be and the world I aspire to create. My commitment to writing public philosophy—especially personally informed, emotionally vulnerable public philosophy that doesn’t shy away from difficult feelings and messy human experiences—is grounded in the hope that philosophy might do this for others, too.
Selected papers
“Nietzsche on the Sociality of Emotional Experience.” European Journal of Philosophy. 31 (3): 748-768. 2023.
“Loneliness and Ressentiment.” Draft.
“Sexism is Exhausting: Nietzsche and the Emotional Dynamics of Sexist Oppression.” In Rebecca Bamford and Allison Merrick (ed.), Nietzsche and Politicized Identities, SUNY Press, 2024.
