I actually didn’t know any philosophy before my undergrad, and wasn’t particularly thrilled by Moore’s two hands, which I think was the first philosophy text I ever read (though even that curmudgeon has a way of growing on you…). But I do remember a distinct moment, when I was reading Kant’s first Critique, and felt I finally got what his project was about—and not only did it blow my mind, but I remember it drove home to me for the first time that philosophy can hatch new and profound thoughts even after centuries of the same debates.
How would you describe your research program?
I would describe it as more searching than re-searching, but the two main strands involve (1) trying to understand how our situated perspectives shape our interpretations of ethical and political issues, with an emphasis on differences in the kinds of language and descriptions we use, and (2) the relation between literature and ethics, with an emphasis on the concept of narrative. My active dissertation and current focus are on (1), but I’ve done a bunch of work on (2) I’d like to get back to eventually.
What issues or questions in philosophy are you most excited by?
Did you know there is a musical based on A Theory of Justice? Does anyone know if it’s still being staged? Because I’d be pretty excited to hear the answer to that. More generally I’m very interested in how (pre)conceptions of the self / identity influence ethical and political theorizing, often in implicit or subtle ways, but I guess there are a host of different questions there.
What are you currently working on?
“On the very possibility of employment”—which unfortunately is not a Davidson-inspired paper (yet), though still a surprisingly effective regulative ideal. Lately I’ve also been working on moral and political disagreement, and thinking more generally about communication in ethics. So far, my main thought on the latter (to paraphrase Gandhi) is that it would be a good idea.
What’s next? Any ideas for projects in the pipeline?
I’d really like to do more applied work, thinking through the language and rhetoric of actual ongoing public conversations about moral and political issues, both here and back home. There’s quite a few, but one I think I want to work on in the near future is discourse around the environment, pollution, etc.
What's the holy grail, pipe dream project? (This doesn't have to be in your AOS, of course, and may even be more fun if it's not.)
There’s a lot of great 20th century work on (broadly) the symbolic and imaginative structure of society, which interests me greatly, spread across a wide area covering sociology, semiotics, structuralist anthropology, formalist literary theory, comparative mythology, etc. (so people like Goffman, Levi-Strauss, Robert Bellah, Clifford Geertz, Victor Turner, Bakhtin, Kenneth Burke, etc.). There isn’t really one common thread or issue running through all of that which I know I want to work on, but I keep coming back to it—some philosophers have written on/around this region, and I suspect there’s more to be unearthed. So if I had, you know, an extra fifty years on the side, I’d appreciate a chance to do just that.