Acerca de

My work focuses on the nature of human understanding. In particular, I am interested in Kant’s theory of understanding and the many challenges posed to Kant’s theory by the hermeneutical accounts of understanding provided Heidegger and Gadamer. Drawing on these latter two thinkers, I ultimately argue for two main theses: (1) that the representing via judgment that Kant argued allows us to grasp sensible particulars in fact marks a derivative or secondary form of understanding, and (2) what enables understanding, including understanding by way of judgment, is an interpretive context that allow objects to appear in light of our (historically and socially situated) existential self-making. 

​

       Going forward, I have become interested in the philosophy dialogue between Fanon and Sartre and, in particular, Fanon’s criticism of Sartrean phenomenology that it fails to appreciate the unique way in which the condition of colonialism structures self-understanding and social interaction. The question that I have been pursuing most recently is: to what extent Fanon’s philosophy forces phenomenology, specifically the Husserlian tradition of phenomenology in which Sartre works, to rethink some of its basic philosophical commitments regarding how we grasp the self’s relation to itself and others? I aim to discern whether phenomenology can successfully incorporate Fanon’s insights and re-work itself, or whether Fanon’s work has shown that, due to the limitations of its approach, phenomenology cannot accomplish one of its chief aims: to provide a compelling account of the self and the way it relates to others.