Here, I’m sharing information on published and forthcoming papers, papers under review as well as on a conference/anthology I’m currently planning with my colleague Gal Katz.

Peer-Reviewed Journals

Fichte and Hegel on Free Time

Forthcoming in European Journal of Philosophy

Abstract. To us today, it seems intuitive that an ideal society would secure for its citizens some time for leisure i.e. some time to do ‘whatever they want’ after having attended to their various responsibilities and natural needs. But, in this paper, I argue that – in 19th century social philosophy – the status of leisure (Muße) in an ideal society was actually surprisingly controversial: whereas J.G. Fichte makes a strong case for leisure as part of an ideal society (going even so far as considering it its central good), G.W.F. Hegel implicitly argues against this idea. For him, leisure is a crook that we only need as long as the social conditions are not sufficiently ideal – whereas a truly rational society would create a new type of work that subsumes the benefits of leisure into work itself. In this paper, I reconstruct this largely forgotten disagreement and argue that – while both positions contain an important overstatement – they also each include an important lesson for the contemporary debate on leisure and society.

Goethe’s Faust and the Philosophy of Money

Forthcoming in Inquiry

Abstract. Philosophers today don’t think of Goethe’s Faust as an important contribution to the philosophy of money. But this is mistaken, I argue. Underneath its lyrical form, Goethe’s text develops a comprehensive view of money that came to be an important influence on left-wing (Karl Marx) and right-wing (Oswald Spengler) discussions of money. Centrally, Goethe argues that modern economic practices have transformed money-obsession (long conceived primarily as an individual vice) into a structural problem: social structures are now set up to systematically require individuals to engage in quasi-obsessive behaviors towards money (e.g. persistently talking about/sacrificing for money) independently, to a significant degree, from their individual choices. This structural power, Goethe proposes, requires a rethinking of how behavior towards money should be morally evaluated – and, importantly, a critique of moral attitudes that ‘individualize’ what is, in truth, a social problem.

Hegel and the Problem of Affluence

Journal of the American Philosophical Association 8 no. 2: 224 - 237 | Link

Abstract. It is widely known that Hegel’s Philosophy of Right recognizes poverty as one of the central problems of modern Civil Society. What is much less well-known, however, is that Hegel sees yet another structural problem at the opposite side of the economic spectrum: a problem of affluence. Indeed, as I show in this paper, Hegel’s text contains a detailed – yet sometimes overlooked – discussion of the detrimental psychological and sociological effects of great wealth, as well as of how to counter them. By bringing this discussion to the fore, we get a more complete picture of Hegel’s theory of Civil Society (and of some of its central concepts, such as ‘the rabble') and shed light on an aspect of Hegel’s social philosophy that speaks to problems we face today.

Death in Berlin. Hegel on Mortality and the Social Order.

British Journal for the History of Philosophy 29 no. 5: 871-890 | Link

Abstract. It is widely acknowledged that Hegel holds the view that a rational social order needs to reconcile us to our status as natural beings, with bodily needs and desires. But while this general view is well-known, one of its most surprising implications is rarely explored: namely the implication that, for Hegel, a rational social order also has to reconcile us to the inevitable fate of everything natural and organic – it needs to reconcile ourselves to our own mortality. This paper explains this largely unknown dimension of Hegel’s view, as well as its implications for contemporary social philosophy. The main contemporary upshot is going to be that Hegel’s argument can be read as presenting the case for a ‘politics of mortality’: for a type of social critique that holds society to the standard of how easy it makes it for social members to face death with a reconciled attitude.

Hegel on the Value of the Market Economy

European Journal of Philosophy 26 no. 4: 1283-1296 | Link

Abstract. It is widely known that Hegel is a proponent and defender of the market economy. But why exactly does Hegel think that the market economy is superior to other economic systems ? In this paper, I argue that Hegel’s answer to this question has not been sufficiently understood. Commentators, or so I want to claim, have only identified one part of Hegel’s argument – but have left out the most original and surprising dimension of his view: namely Hegel’s conviction that we should embrace the market economy for its educational impact. Indeed, Hegel thinks that the market, by creating a sphere of life apart from traditional norms and expectations, teaches us something about ourselves, about others and about the world we inhabit together – something that we could not learn anywhere else, but that we inevitably need to live well as individuals.

The Moral Turn in Kant's Philosophy of History 

Philosophisches Jahrbuch 125 no. 1: 2-19 | Link

Abstract: In this paper, I argue that Kant’s philosophy of history underwent a significant change between his 1784 Idea for a Universal History and his 1790 Third Critique. My proposal is that in between these two texts Kant decisively revised his conception of the sources of historical, i.e. cultural and political, progress: In 1784, he conceived of historical progress as primarily accomplished through social antagonism among human beings, whereas beginning in 1790, he elevates ethical cooperation into a second, significant source of progress. Between 1784 and the 1790s, in other words, Kant re-conceived the collaboration between moral agents as a driving force of history and of the progressing cultivation of humankind. In this paper I offer evidence for this change and suggest reasons why it might have occurred.

Contributions to Edited Volumes

Schelling on the Feeling of Freedom

Commissioned for Cambridge Critical Guide to Schelling’s Freedom Essay, ed. G. Anthony Bruno

Abstract. In one of its central passages, Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift makes a stunning phenomenological claim: human beings feel responsible for their own characteristics – even for the many characteristics that, as empirical beings, they didn’t choose and cannot change (SW VII, 386). We may, Schelling asserts in other words, well know that characteristics like the inherited ‘shape of [our] body’ (SW VII, 387) are immutably imposed on us – e.g. by genetics – yet we still cannot help but feel that they nevertheless express our own underlying choice. This claim is so stunning, since it seems to systematically misdescribe the human experience: while we may feel responsible for some surface characteristics of ourselves (e.g. for characteristics we have purposefully acquired), but we certainly don’t feel responsible for characteristics imposed on us by genetics or upbringing. So: what argument can Schelling present for his unusual phenomenological claim? And does it hold relevance for our contemporary reflections on human freedom? In this paper, I contend that, contrary to initial appearances, Schelling’s claim deserves to be taken seriously and that, if we do so, it indeed poses an interesting challenge for the contemporary debate about the nature of human freedom.

Adam Müller on Money

Forthcoming in The Palgrave Handbook on Philosophy and Money, ed. Joseph J Tinguely

Abstract. The economic thought of the politician and poet Adam Müller (1779-1829) has often been dismissed. Portrayed as heavily reactionary, philosophically unsubstantial, and internally inconsistent, Müller’s views have been rejected by thinkers across the political spectrum (from Karl Marx to Carl Schmitt). But in this paper, I argue that Müller’s economic thought deserves rediscovery. This is because Müller’s economic writings prove surprisingly prescient when it comes to one of their most prominent topics: the issue of money. Anticipating contemporary views long before they went mainstream, Müller argues that the essence of all money is debt, and that the earliest human exchanges relied on credit, rather than, as many have claimed, on ‘truck and barter’. Indeed, defying many of his skeptical contemporaries, Müller defends the idea of paper money and argues that its rejection betrays a misunderstanding of the ontology of money. Müller, hence, deserves to be recognized as unexpectedly forward-thinking when it comes to his philosophy of money – and as someone whose economic thought is certainly worth our attention today.

Hegel on the Living Dead

Forthcoming in Praktische Philosophie nach Kant, ed. Jörg Noller

Abstract. Throughout his philosophical works, Hegel perplexingly insists that there is a form of death that mysteriously affects those who are physically still alive. Indeed, Hegel calls this second form of death ‘spiritual death (geistiger Tod)’ (PR § 151Z), and argues that it is a significant threat to both individual and social life, almost on par with its physical and much less puzzling counterpart. My paper aims to shed light on this strange, and frequently neglected, idea. It illuminates Hegel’s conception of ‘spiritual death’ and shows that this conception is not only central to Hegel’s social philosophy, but even holds relevance for social philosophy today.

The physical body and its role in Hegel’s mature ethical theory 

Forthcoming in Life, Organisms and Cognition, ed. Johannes-Georg Schülein und Luca Corti, Springer

Abstract. Much attention has been paid to the role that Hegel, in his mature ethical theory, attributes to what he calls the social or political body i.e. to the institutions of the social order. Ironically, by comparison, much less attention has been paid to the role the physical body plays in the same theory. This paper attempts to level the scale, by reconstructing Hegel’s ethical theory of the physical body from the Philosophy of Right and the Encyclopedia. Hegel’s leading thesis here, I argue, is that developing and maintaining a good relationship with one’s physical body is not only rather demanding, but also necessarily requires the right kind of social institutions – and that absent these institutions, individuals will be unable to see and to treat their body in the right kind of way. Achieving a good relationship to their body, hence, is something that individuals cannot just do on their own, on Hegel’s view, but something that requires them to collaborate with others, creating and sustaining social institutions that help them be at home in their bodies.  

Kant’s Philosophy of History and its historical significance

Forthcoming in Handbuch Kantianismus, ed. Jörg Noller, Metzler Verlag [in German]

Abstract. Kant wrote about history throughout most of his life. Yet, it often seems that – in comparison to his ethics or his epistemology – his historical writings are less deserving of our contemporary attention, if they are deserving of it at all. Indeed, at least on first glance [1] Kant’s historical writings appear to be in contradiction with one another and – with their grand claims about history – [2] out of touch with Kant’s own critical framework and its famed epistemic humility. Even worse, it might seem as if, in their 19th/20th century reception, they have been [3] largely eclipsed by other philosophies of history (such as Herder’s, Hegel’s and Marx’s) and that, finally, [4] their teleological and explicitly euro-centric character renders them incompatible with the standards of modern historical thought. In light of these challenges, my article provides an overview over Kant’s philosophy of history and its historical significance that responds to these four points from a Kantian perspective, and shows that Kant’s philosophy of history is not only worthy of our attention today – but even crucially relevant for us.

Schelling on Time and Agency in the Freiheitsschrift and the Weltalter

In Schellings Freiheitsschrift – Methode, System, Kritik, ed. Thomas Buchheim, Thomas Frisch and Nora Wachsmann, 371-384, Mohr Siebeck | Link

Abstract. In his 1811 Weltalter, Schelling, for the first time in his philosophical career, confronts the reader with a stunning claim: time, he argues here, is not the all-encompassing medium in which all human (and divine) actions and interactions take place – rather, time is generated by agents through the decisions they make. In this paper, I investigate what motivated Schelling to develop this heterodox and consciously counter-intuitive view. I argue that Schelling was driven to develop it out of a desire to preserve the possibility of human freedom. Indeed, I argue that there are good arguments that, already in his so-called Freiheitsschrift of 1809, Schelling had come to believe that human freedom, in order to be possible, required time to be very different from how we ordinarily conceive of it. His heterodox view of time, then, appears to be intended as a direct response to this realization – as an attempt to show that time indeed had this unconventional structure and was, hence, ‘fit for human freedom’.

Schellings Freiheitsschrift als systembildende Pragmatie. Zur Methode der Untersuchung im Kontrast mit Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes.

Co-authored w/ Thomas Frisch and Nora Wachsmann, In Wozu Metaphysik?, ed. by Christopher Erhard et al. | Link

Abstract: In 1807 Hegel publishes his Phenomenology, in which he prominently presents a new philosophical methodology. Only two years later, and after reading crucial parts of the Phenomenology, Hegel’s former friend Schelling equally presents new philosophical methodology in his 1809 Freiheitsschrift. This begs an obvious, but only rarely asked, question: is Schelling’s new method influenced by Hegel’s new method ? In this paper, we argue that the answer is ‘Yes’. Schelling is indeed influenced by Hegel and even takes over central methodological insights from the Phenomenology. But he is also critical of Hegel’s method and tries to present a better alternative: a critique, or so we claim, that prefigures some of Schelling’s well-known later criticisms of Hegel and his distinction between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ philosophy.

Disposition / Gesinnung and Sociability / Geselligkeit

In Cambridge Kant Lexicon, ed. Julian Wuerth, 156-157 and 407 | Link

Abstract. Two brief lexicon entries that provide an overview over these two key concepts of Kant’s Practical Philosophy, and their different uses throughout Kant’s oeuvre.

In Preparation

The Dream Allegory in Schelling’s ‘Denkmal’

In preparation

Abstract. The last section of Schelling’s Denkmal is its most puzzling part. In contrast to the rest of the book, which develops a critique of Jacobi in a conventional philosophical style, Part III takes the form of a playful Dream Allegory: an imaginary tale that shows a fictional Jacobi on a dreamlike journey – a journey that features encounters with the dead, magic and trips to various fantastical places. All this literary flair, however, makes it hard to spell out exactly how this allegorical vision is supposed to contribute to the main goal of the book: namely to Schelling’s philosophical critique of Jacobi. In this paper, I attempt to make the connection. I argue that the Dream Allegory offers an immanent critique of Jacobi’s position – a critique, in particular, that shows Jacobi to be engulfed in a performative self-contradiction, where the content of Jacobi’s writings contradicts the aims with which Jacobi publishes them. Read this way, in other words, the outwardly playful Dream Allegory contains perhaps the Denkmal’s most serious charge: namely that even Jacobi himself should be a vigorous critic of Jacobi.

Corporation and Co-operation in Hegel’s Civil Society

In preparation

Abstract. As many readers have noted with surprise, Hegel holds the counterintuitive view that market competition itself could be a site for solidarity, community and social equality. Competing with one another on the market, on Hegel’s view, does not necessarily harm communal ties, in other words, but rather can – under the right circumstances – strengthen such ties. But how could this be possible? This paper offers a new reconstruction of Hegel’s argument, and of its contemporary significance. Focusing less on Hegel’s concrete institutional proposals (the ‘corporations') and more on their underlying philosophical principles, I argue that Hegel presents a persuasive conceptual argument that the market’s strain on communal ties is not a necessary phenomenon, but rather, if anything, one engendered by contingent social developments. Indeed, Hegel thinks that the social developments often thought to be most conducive to market exchange – the extension of market principles to all social goods, the disappearance of cooperative forms of production – are, in fact, preventing the market from realizing its own ethical value. If those are reversed, Hegel proposes, the market has the potential to become a sphere where community and economic competition are truly reconciled.

Conference/Anthology

Hegel’s Legacy: First Nature in Social Philosophy

Co-Organized with my colleague Gal Katz, October 2021, funded by a grant from the Thyssen Foundation

Abstract. While recent years have seen an enhanced interest in Hegel's conception of "second nature", we believe that there are reasons to go beyond the widespread fascination with this Aristotelian concept. A key idea that we wish to explore in the conference is that the goodness or rationality of second nature—including its remaining “alive”, as it were—depends on the extent to which it retains sufficient grounding in first nature: in our biological desires and drives. Indeed, it seems that on Hegel’s view, modern Sittlichkeit owes its supreme rationality, goodness and freedom to the fact that it incorporates and gives outlet to human properties that are rooted in first nature. Any habituated second nature that suppresses such first nature properties risks ethical corruption and ossification (as was the fate of ancient Sittlichkeit, on Hegel’s diagnosis).

Our conference, hence, aims at a reevaluation of the role that first nature plays in Hegel’s social theory. Since such a reevaluation always should go beyond the confines of historically-focused Hegel scholarship, we explicitly also want to probe his views for their contemporary significance: indeed, his commitment to first nature as a norm—for evaluating, critiquing and designing social institutions—seems highly pertinent to social theory today. A wide range of present day ethical problems with a “material substrate” can, or so it appears, be understood in terms of failing the norm of sufficient grounding in first nature—e.g., the proliferation of depression and anxiety in developed societies, the decline in sexual intimacy in the United States, even the environmental crisis.