Research Statement
The central guiding question of my research is: “What is it to live well as human beings within the conditions in which we find ourselves?” These conditions include the human condition (what is perennial) as well as the conditions of modernity. My central guiding question has a home in contemporary virtue ethics and much of my research can be understood as situated within this subfield of philosophy. However, I think adequately addressing this question takes us into a number of other subfields, and so my research also extends into areas of applied ethics, social and political philosophy, meaning in life, and philosophy of religion and the spiritual life. My first book monograph, Virtue and Meaning: A Neo-Aristotelian Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2020), situates my virtue ethic approach within an account of our distinctive nature as the meaning-seeking animal and as a response to the modern problem of disenchantment, that is, the threatened loss of meaning/value. My second book monograph, The Virtues of Limits (Oxford University Press, 2022), explores the place of limits within a well-lived human life and develops and defends an original account of “limiting virtues”—viz., humility, reverence, moderation, contentment, loyalty, and neighborliness—in relation to four kinds of limits: existential, moral, political, and economic limits. This book is especially concerned to rein in the perennial tendency toward “playing God,” which is also heightened within modernity. I am currently working on my third book monograph, Spiritual Alienation and the Quest for God, which articulates, explores, and responds to the problem of spiritual alienation, which it argues is a perennial feature of the human condition but is also exacerbated within the conditions of modernity. I also have plans for further book projects that will address my central guiding question in other ways. Stay tuned!
For more on my research, see my CV page.
The central guiding question of my research is: “What is it to live well as human beings within the conditions in which we find ourselves?” These conditions include the human condition (what is perennial) as well as the conditions of modernity. My central guiding question has a home in contemporary virtue ethics and much of my research can be understood as situated within this subfield of philosophy. However, I think adequately addressing this question takes us into a number of other subfields, and so my research also extends into areas of applied ethics, social and political philosophy, meaning in life, and philosophy of religion and the spiritual life. My first book monograph, Virtue and Meaning: A Neo-Aristotelian Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2020), situates my virtue ethic approach within an account of our distinctive nature as the meaning-seeking animal and as a response to the modern problem of disenchantment, that is, the threatened loss of meaning/value. My second book monograph, The Virtues of Limits (Oxford University Press, 2022), explores the place of limits within a well-lived human life and develops and defends an original account of “limiting virtues”—viz., humility, reverence, moderation, contentment, loyalty, and neighborliness—in relation to four kinds of limits: existential, moral, political, and economic limits. This book is especially concerned to rein in the perennial tendency toward “playing God,” which is also heightened within modernity. I am currently working on my third book monograph, Spiritual Alienation and the Quest for God, which articulates, explores, and responds to the problem of spiritual alienation, which it argues is a perennial feature of the human condition but is also exacerbated within the conditions of modernity. I also have plans for further book projects that will address my central guiding question in other ways. Stay tuned!
For more on my research, see my CV page.