Published Articles
This article examines whether vision in Plato’s Timaeus can realize its primary function of permitting humans to stabilize their misaligned orbits of intelligence by getting to know the universe’s orbits as revealed through the heavenly bodies’ movements. I consider a concern that Timaeus, while seemingly requiring nocturnal vision for this purpose, appears to preclude its possibility, thereby threatening the dialogue’s internal coherence. I then argue that Timaeus has the resources to overcome this worry and to provide a philosophically cogent account of nocturnal vision.
Anne Conway’s understanding of the faculty of memory in The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy crucially intersects with her larger psychological and metaphysical projects. However, it has thus far been largely overlooked in the secondary literature. It is the purpose of this article to rectify this omission and emphasize the greater role which this faculty has to play in Conway’s philosophy by systematically examining her account of memory. I do this by first elucidating the objects of memory as well as the key features of the faculty itself before turning to develop what I believe to be a hitherto unnoticed but significant concern, which arises out of one of the key conditions required for memory to occur and which seriously threatens to undermine Conway’s theological and soteriological positions. After considering and rejecting several possibilities for alleviating this worry, I posit an interpretation which I argue is capable of resolving the concern, restoring coherence to Conway’s theological and soteriological projects, and more fully revealing Conway’s understanding of the faculty of memory itself.
Scholarship on Aristotle’s theory of visual perception has traditionally held that Aristotle had a single, static, conception of light and that he believed that illumination occurred prior to and independent of the actions of colours. I contend that this view precludes the medium from becoming actually transparent, thus making vision impossible. I here offer an alternative to the traditional interpretation, using contemporary conceptual tools to make good philosophical sense of Aristotle’s position. I call my view the ‘ecological’ interpretation. It postulates two conceptions of light: non-visible mobile propagated light and visible static illumination produced by the interaction of propagated light with the environment’s coloured textured surfaces. I argue that these contemporary conceptual tools can find a foothold in and consistently enrich Aristotle’s extant position and that, with their aid, we can restore coherence to his theories of light and vision.
The Object of Aristotle’s God’s Νόησις in Metaphysics Λ.9
Journal of Greco-Roman Studies (57.3), pp. 49–66.
2018
The published open-access version is available here.
In this paper I attempt to discover the object of Aristotle’s God’s νόησις in Metαphysics Λ.9. In Section I, I catalogue existing interpretations and mention the two key concepts of (i) God’s substancehood and (ii) his metaphysical simplicity. In Section II, I explore the first two aporiae of Λ.9 – namely (1) what God’s οὐσία is and (2) what God intelligizes. In Section III, I show how Aristotle solves these aporiae by contending that God’s οὐσία is actually intelligizing, and being determined to do so by himself, and that the object of his νόησις is himself, such that he intelligizes his own οὐσία, and I explain what this means. In Section IV, I present the second pair of aporiae in Λ.9 and show how, by solving these, Aristotle clarifies the position arrived at in Section III. Lastly, in Section V, I present the final aporia and its solution, and conclude that Aristotle’s God is a radically-unified Narcissus-God who intelligizes his own οὐσία and who has, above all, fulfilled the Delphic principle: Γνῶθι Σεαυτόν.
articles currently under review
Several of my papers are approaching the stage to be submitted to journals. Please visit my ‘Current Research’ Page for further details regarding these projects.
Book Reviews
Review of Pfeiffer, Aristotle’s Theory of Bodies
Bryn Mawr Classical Review
BMCR.2019.09.10
2019
The published open-access version is available here.
This review discusses Christian Pfeiffer’s book, Aristotle’s Theory of Bodies, wherein Pfeiffer elucidates the neglected topic of Aristotle’s theory of body as quantity—i.e., body understood as a three-dimensionally extended continuous magnitude, which is bounded by surfaces and is a feature of physical substances – as well as the associated concepts of surface, boundary, extension, contact, and continuity.