Photo by Sy Bean
I am Associate Professor at University of Puget Sound in unassumingly beautiful Tacoma, WA. I did my PhD in philosophy at Yale University.
I think, write and teach about various topics, whose common thread might be the idea that light and beauty can be found in unexpected corners, and that, vice versa, even the most luminous aspects of human experience conceal darkness and flaws. Less cryptically (and simplifying quite a bit), I defend the views that genuine envy can be good; that true love can be unrequited; that "ugly" bodies can be beautiful.
My book The Philosophy of Envy, was published by Cambridge University Press (July 2021). In it, I defend a novel taxonomy of envy and show its implications in ethics, politics, and personal relationships. For an updated list of my publications, see my research page (for penultimate drafts of them, you can check out my philpapers page). For drafts of my works in progress, please email me.
Among my most recent public engagements, I chatted with Krista Thomason for The Philosopher and gave a lecture titled Envy and Resentment in the time of Coronavirus for Humanities Washington. I was also interviewed by Emma Firth for an article in the Stylist: How I Learned To Lean Into My Envy and by Jana Pruden for an article in The Globe and Mail on envy in a pandemic. I have chatted with the late Kenneth Taylor, and with Joshua Landy at Philosophy Talk, and I have been interviewed by Amanda Vanstone for Counterpoint (Australia Broadcast Corporation) on the topic of love and envy. I also wrote an essay for Aeon on this same topic. My latest popular essay explains how envy can lead to self-actualization.
I think, write and teach about various topics, whose common thread might be the idea that light and beauty can be found in unexpected corners, and that, vice versa, even the most luminous aspects of human experience conceal darkness and flaws. Less cryptically (and simplifying quite a bit), I defend the views that genuine envy can be good; that true love can be unrequited; that "ugly" bodies can be beautiful.
My book The Philosophy of Envy, was published by Cambridge University Press (July 2021). In it, I defend a novel taxonomy of envy and show its implications in ethics, politics, and personal relationships. For an updated list of my publications, see my research page (for penultimate drafts of them, you can check out my philpapers page). For drafts of my works in progress, please email me.
Among my most recent public engagements, I chatted with Krista Thomason for The Philosopher and gave a lecture titled Envy and Resentment in the time of Coronavirus for Humanities Washington. I was also interviewed by Emma Firth for an article in the Stylist: How I Learned To Lean Into My Envy and by Jana Pruden for an article in The Globe and Mail on envy in a pandemic. I have chatted with the late Kenneth Taylor, and with Joshua Landy at Philosophy Talk, and I have been interviewed by Amanda Vanstone for Counterpoint (Australia Broadcast Corporation) on the topic of love and envy. I also wrote an essay for Aeon on this same topic. My latest popular essay explains how envy can lead to self-actualization.
