Faculty

My research focuses on Kant and the post-Kantian tradition.  My research interests include 18th and 19th century aesthetics; the role of organic metaphor in conceptions of systematicity in Kant's philosophy and in German idealism; the meaning and status of autonomy and objectivity in the Kantian and feminist traditions; and the nature of aesthetic and practical subjectivity.  I am currently working on two projects that have grown out of my book project, Kant on Beauty and Biology: An Interpretation of the Critique of Judgment (Cambridge, 2007). I am working, first, on the implications of Kant's accounts of aesthetic value and feeling in the Critique of Judgment for his moral philosophy; my interests here include the possible conflicts between the universal validity of aesthetic value (on Kant's view) with his justifications of morality as the trumping, sole universal value claim, and (more broadly) the role of feeling in Kant's account of moral action, and of practical fanaticism. I am also working on a book project on Herder's aesthetic theory, which - I argue - is both of historical interest, as an attempt to synthesize rationalist and empiricist aesthetics that is a significant alternative to Kant's own proposed synthesis, and of current philosophical interest, because it is a naturalist aesthetic theory that is also fully cognizant of cultural, historical context, variation, and change. I have offered upper level undergraduate courses on Kant, 19th century philosophy, philosophy of the enlightenment, aesthetics, and feminist philosophy, and graduate seminars on Kant, 19 th c. aesthetics, philosophy and literature, and Kierkegaard.  Topics for future courses and seminars might include evil, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, and Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.

Writings and Recently Taught Courses

• "A New Look at Kant's Theory of Pleasure" Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60:3 Summer 2002.
• "MacKinnon's Critique of Objectivity," in A Mind of One's Own (second edition), Louise Anthony and Charlotte Witt, eds. (Boulder , CO : Westview Press, 2002).
• "Awe or Envy: Herder Contra Kant on the Sublime" Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 61:3 Summer 2003.
• "The Purposiveness of Form: A Reading of Kant's Aesthetic Formalism," Journal of the History of Philosophy , October 2006.

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Current CV

• CURRENT CV

Recently Taught Courses

• Phil 313-1: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Analytic)
• Phil 313-2:  Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Dialectic)
• Phil 380: Philosophy of Art

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