Meaning in life
2 writings
Reasons of Love and Conceptual Good-for-Nothings
In Themes from Susan Wolf. Michael Frauchiger and Markus Stepanians (eds.). Berlin: De Gruyter. In Press.
Appealing to the instrumentality of concepts raises the worry of yielding the “wrong kind of reasons.” Drawing on Susan Wolf’s work on “reasons of love,” I argue this worry is misplaced. I further explore Wolf’s notion of “valuable good-for-nothings” to demonstrate how non-instrumental values ultimately reinforce the importance of reasons of love in concept use.
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The Shaken Realist: Bernard Williams, the War, and Philosophy as Cultural Critique
European Journal of Philosophy 31 (1): 226–247. 2023. With Nikhil Krishnan. doi:10.1111/ejop.12794
Offers a new reading of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy by bringing out the wider cultural resonances of the book. Far from being simply a critique of academic tendencies, the book turns out to be about ethical issues that acquired particular urgency in the wake of WWII: the primacy of character over method, the obligation to follow orders, and the possibility of combining truth, truthfulness, and a meaningful life.
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