Line Item Vita

Public Philosophy

Why Aristotle Today? published in The Philosopher

Book on Aristotle’s Theory of Generation

My new book, Aristotle on the Matter of Form: A Feminist Metaphysics of Generation, was released November 30, 2019.

Sarah Tyson interviewed me about the book for the New Books Network.

See my blogpost about it at the EUP blog.

An interview with students at the College of Wooster on the project was recently published in their undergraduate journal, Sapere Aude.

I spoke about the project at Boston University on November 15, 2019.

See announcements of the book at the SPEP and APS websites.

Reviews of Aristotle on the Nature of Community

In November 2013, my book, Aristotle on the Nature of Community, was published by Cambridge University Press.  I argue in the book that Aristotle’s conception of community can best be understood by reading his claim that political life is natural through his definition of nature as an internal principle or source of movement through which natural things move from within themselves to fulfill themselves.  I argue that this conception of political life enables an open conception of community, where community, as natural, is always concerned with whether it is achieving its end and whether it is including those it should be including in order to achieve that end.

• Thornton Lockwood reviewed the book for Classical Journal Reviews.
• Stephen Salkever reviewed the book for The Journal of the History of Philosophy.
• Catherine Brock reviewed the book for The Review of Politics out of Notre Dame.
• Kevin M. Cherry reviews the book in Polis: A Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought.
• Lee Trepanier reviewed my book for Bryn Mawr Classical Review.  
• Fred D. Miller, Jr. reviews the book for Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
• Patrick Madigan reviews it for The Heythrop Journal. 
• Joshua Hayes reviews the book for The Journal of Hellenic Studies, most of which you can read here.
• The Alumni Gazette at my alma mater, The College of William and Mary, acknowledged the existence of it.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

• “Beyond Biopolitics and Juridico-Institutional Politics: Aristotle on the Nature of Politics,” in Biopolitics and Ancient Thought, eds. Jussi Backman & Antonio Cimino. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.
• “Saving the Appearances of Plato’s Cave.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 37 (2021): 31-56.  Doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/22134417-00361P04
• “Why Aristotle Now?” The Philosopher 109 (Spring 2021): 69-75.
• “‘Not Slavery, But Salvation’: Aristotle on Constitution and Government,” Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought 34 (2017):115-135. Here I argue that Aristotle’s account of constitution and government run counter to the social contract tradition by not making the government a separate body from the citizens and thus it is not a source of oppression but of the institution of citizens’ deliberations and judgments.
• “Nature, Action, and Politics: A Critique of Arendt’s Reading of Aristotle,” Ancient Philosophy. 37 (2017):113-128. This article argues against Arendt’s view that Aristotle’s conception of political community is as an artifact that is made and show how Arendt’s account of action joined with Aristotle’s view of physis as the internal source of movement show the polis to be natural, but not in a way that means without human influence or determination.
• “Ruling in Turn: Political Rule Against Mastery in Aristotle’s Politics.” Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy.  17 (2013): 301‐311. This article argues that Aristotle’s view of political rule is specifically meant to defend political rule against mastery.
• “Rancière and Aristotle: Parapolitics, Party Politics and the Institution of Perperpetual Politics .” Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 26 (2012): 627‐646. I defend Aristotle against Rancière’s criticism that Aristotle’s democracy is inclusive only in name as a ruse to quiet the many.
• “The Human Animal: The Rational and the Natural in Aristotle’s Anthropology.”  Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy.  16 (2012): 269-285. This piece argues for the continuity between human beings and animals to show a similar structure of explanation in Aristotle’s account that shows the logos-capacity of the human in no way to compromise the naturalness of the human.
• “The Truth of Politics in Alain Badiou: ‘There is Only One World.” parrhesia: A Journal for Critical Philosophy 12 (2011): 82-93.
• “Logos and the Political Nature of Anthrôpos in Aristotle’s Politics.” Polis: The Journal  for Ancient Greek Political Thought.  27 (2010): 1-16.
• “Toward a New Metaphysics: Difference in Irigaray’s Reading of Plato’s Cave.”  Philosophy Today 50 (2006): 22-30.

Book Chapters

• “Beyond Biopolitics and Juridico-Institutional Politics: Aristotle on The Nature of Politics” in Biopolitics in Ancient Thought, Oxford 2022. This article develops my case that Aristotle’s politics avoids the Scylla of biopolitics and the Charybdis of juridico-institutional politics specifically with recourse to arguments in Aristotle’s theoretical works about the relation of the soul to the body and the different souls to one another.
• “’She Really Got You’: Transcending Hegemonic Masculinity at a College for Men,” in Critical Pedagogical Strategies to Transcend Hegemonic Masculinity, edited by Amber E. George and Russell W. Waltz. New York: Peter Lang, 2021.
• “Does it Matter? Material Nature and Vital Heat in Aristotle’s Biology.” In Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Metaphysics, ed. Abraham Jacob Greenstine and Ryan J. Johnson (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017).
• “Badiou contra Hegel: The Materialist Dialectic Against the Myth of the Whole,” in Badiou and Hegel, ed. Jim Vernon and Antonio Calcagno.  Lanham, MD: Lexington Press, 2015. 59-76. For a review of the anthology by someone who really doesn’t like my reading of Hegel, check out Adrian Johnston’s review in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
• “Kicking the Hornet’s Nest: The Hidden Section in Every Institution,” in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Philosophy: Everything is Fire.  Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. November 2011. 155-165.

Book Reviews

• “The Difference Sexual Difference Makes in Aristotle’s Corpus.” A Review Article on Marguerite Deslauriers, Aristotle on Sexual Difference: Metaphysics, Biology, Politics.
• Polis: A Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought 40.2 (2023): 339-348. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/20512996-12340412
• Review of Aristotle, Politics: A New Translation, by C.D.C. Reeve (2019)
• Review of Alain Badiou, Plato’s Republic, Ancient Philosophy 35 (2015): 216-220.
• Review of Gender: Antiquity and Its Legacy, Brooke Holmes, Hypatia Reviews Online, 2014.
• Review of Feminist Readings of Antigone, edited by Fanny Söderbäck, philoSophia 2 (2012): 234-237.