Research

Vita

For a PDF of my CV, click here.

I am currently a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania writing about social and political philosophy and 18th & 19th century German philosophy.

In my research, I ask questions about labor: what is it? When is it good? And who is responsible for performing it? I take a historical and interdisciplinary approach to these questions, drawing on German philosophy, political economy, and sociology. I am excited about reading historical figures in ways that open up new solutions to pressing social and political problems.

My paper on Kant and Labor – an example of this kind of historically-infomred philosophy – is forthcoming in Philosophers' Imprint.

What I’m working on now

Other papers on these topics that are under review or in-progress:

• A paper on Fichte’s political economy
• “Why all should contribute”
  • Arguing that we have an obligation to “pitch in” on socially necessary work.
• “Why work is central”
  • Arguing that work is a centrally important human activity because of its social significance.
• “Job specialization in Fichte and Marx”
  • In which I compare Marx and Fichte’s views about jobs in the rational economy.

I am also invested in key debates in social and political philosophy that surround my primary research on labor, such as the place of needs in political philosophy, the compatibility of capitalism with different theories of distributive justice, and the uses and abuses of artificial intelligence.

Some papers in-progress on these topics:

• “Public goods as a source of exit power”
  • Arguing that “exit” at work is only meaningfully achieved when we provide people with certain subsistence goods directly, rather than promoting tight labor markets or a UBI.
• “Capitalism and sufficiency”
  • Co-authored with Mike Gadomski; in which we argue that taking sufficiency seriously means being critical of capitalism, pushing sufficientarians to the left.
• “AI, labor-saving technology, and meaningful work”
  • Public draft here; in which I argue that AI will do to white-collar jobs what labor-saving technology did to blue-collar jobs in the 20th century.

Public writing

You can find my public writing here.