My research has developed along roughly three paths, with occasional detours along the way. My primary area of research has been in late 20th century continental philosophy, primarily the work of Gilles Deleuze. My work in Deleuze emerged out of my initial passion in philosophy—existentialism, and Jean-Paul Sartre in particular. From Sartre I was led to Merleau-Ponty and from there eventually to Foucault and Deleuze. When I began working on my dissertation (circa 1991), there was not much work on Deleuze’s philosophy, though there were people out there who were beginning to pick up on the many ways Deleuze’s thought can be put to work.
My second research path is in early modern philosophy and political theory, especially Spinoza and Hume. This work evolved naturally out of my work on Deleuze given the fact that Deleuze wrote monographs on Spinoza (two on Spinoza in fact) and Hume and is in many ways a Spinozist who has also taken on Hume’s problem of understanding how a stable self emerges from the scattered, diverse multiplicity of impressions and ideas that are at the core of our experience of the world for Hume.
My third research path has sought to draw from the insights and concepts developed and used in my other areas of research in order to create a provide a philosophical basis for understanding the historical conditions that infuse our current social, political, and economic realities. My most recent, and soon to be published books, An Inquiry into Analytic-Continental Metaphysics and Towards a Critical Existentialism (both coming out in September 2022), are the result of this most recent effort. Going forward I intend to continue to work along the current trajectory of this third research path, while likely drawing from Deleuze and early modern thought along the way. I also plan to write work that will target a wider audience. More than ever, it seems to me that we need to enrich our understanding of where we are and how we got here, and do so in a way that allows as many people as possible both to ask important questions and find the willingness and openness to enter into dialogue with others in response to these questions.
Writings
Below are a number of my papers and presentations from over the past several years. Some of the papers are published, and others are presentations I gave as keynote or plenary speaker that may have ended up as part of a larger book, though in many cases they did not. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments.
Unpublished papers/talks
At 20000 words, this is really two papers rather than one, and this is true from the perspective of the arguments as well. On the one hand, I argue that recent analytic work in grounding can be understood from the perspective of problematic Ideas that I argue for in my two forthcoming books. My argument here charts an alternative understanding of ground (or PSR) that avoids the monistic denial of distinct objects or grounds while also not grounding in any distinct object. On the other hand, I argue that Jean-Paul Sartre’s development of the idea of a transcendental field, in Transcendence of the Ego, anticipates some of Gilles Deleuze’s moves, moves which I in turn extend in developing the arguments for problematic Ideas. Although I had fun writing this paper, and learned a lot along the way, it may end up as two shorter papers, one focused on the analytic approaches to grounding, the other on Sartre’s legacy. They will have started, however, as this longer essay.
With What Must Philosophy Begin
I presented this essay as a keynote at the annual SEP-FEP conference in 2019, at Royal Holloway, University of London. Along with Alan Schrift and Joanna Hodge, we were each asked to address the question, with what must philosophy begin? This short paper is my answer to that question.
Published Papers
Making Sense of Problems: Toward a Deleuzo-Humean Critical Theory
I presented this paper at SPEP 2021 online conference. This is a distilliation of some of the arguments that are in my recent two-volume work (see books section). This has been published in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
Nothing Matters: Skepticism, Spinoza, and Contemporary French Thought
This is my most recent publication, mostly on Spinoza and Althusser, though with some Deleuzean arguments about the nature of problems playing a key role as well. Published in Crisis and Critique.
To Live a Problem: Deleuze and Existential Politics
I presented an earlier version of this essay at Charles University, in Prague, in November 2019. They published some of the essays from that event and this is an extended version of a keynote I gave at the “Performativity and Creativity” conference.
Hume and Continental Philosophy
This is my contribution to the excellent collection of essays on Hume, edited by Angela Coventry and Alexander Sager for Routledge. In addition to looking at what Deleuze does with Hume, I also look at the influence of Hume on Sartre and others.
Are we Mad? Intensity and the Problems of Modern Philosophy
This is my contribution to a special issue of Deleuze Studies that was devoted to taking on the concept of intensity in Deleuze’s work, a concept that has been a difficult one to nail down and has been given a wide range of interpretations.
For those interested in a more complete picture of my research, here is a copy of my most recent cv.