I am a philosopher and humanist, interested in many areas of philosophy, including political philosophy, environmental ethics, language and the mind, and the history of humanist thought in Europe. I am trained in both the analytic and continental tradition. There are good things to learn from both, and from the history of philosophy in general.
I completed my MA in philosophy, history and sociology at the University of Leipzig, Germany, with a thesis on Frege and Husserl on sense and meaning, before undertaking a doctorate on the semantics of descriptive singular terms at the University of Oxford, completed in 2006 with a DPhil. After that, I spent five years at Trinity College and Jesus College at Oxford as a lecturer in philosophy. I joined the Department of Philosophy at the University of Kent in 2011.
Here is an overview about my most recent books:
In 2012 I published a book on Frege’s logic, offering a critical discussion of philosophical issues surrounding Frege’s logic, especially as presented in his Begriffsschrift (1879), for instance his function-theoretic conception of the content of judgements. The book aims to demonstrate, using Frege's example, that philosophy is not a mathematical discipline, in spite of a mistaken assumption in contemporary analytic philosophy.
In 2018, I published Kant, God and Metaphysics: The Secret Thorn, an attempt to re-evaluate Kant's metaphysics. Kant is widely acknowledged as one of the most important modern philosophers. He undertook his famous critical turn to save human freedom and morality from the challenge of determinism and materialism. Intertwined with his metaphysical interests, however, he also had theological commitments, which have received insufficient attention. He believed that man is a fallen creature and in need of ‘redemption’. This book aims to recover the focal point and inner contradictions of his thought, the ‘secret thorn’ of his metaphysics (as Heidegger once put it). It first locates Kant in the tradition of reflection on the human weakness from Luther to Hume, and then engages in a critical, but charitable, manner with Kant’s entire pre-critical work, including his posthumous fragments. Special attention is given to The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763), one of the most difficult, interesting and underestimated of Kant’s works. My book engages with both Anglophone and continental scholarship, and deploys modern analytical tools to make sense of Kant.
My current research is focused on political philosophy and environmental ethics/sustainability. I am currently working on a book on the idea of communal ownership (e.g. of the atmosphere), likely to be completed in 2024.
I also have an interest in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and the relation between philosophy and poetry. I have translated three books by Romanian writers into German. I have an interest in the study of totalitarianism (such as fascism and communism), and the ethics of memory (as related to genocides such as the Armenian or Jewish one). I have edited and translated the diary of Mihail Sebastian, a Romanian-Jewish writer who witnessed the rise of fascism; it received an important prize in Germany in 2006.
I am member of the UK Kant Society and the Aristotelian Society, and a reviewer for the AHRC, OUP, Routledge, Columbia University Press, Bloomsbury, Lexington Books, Mind, Philosophical Quarterly, Kantian Review, Philosophical Studies, Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, Theoria, and other journals.
I am what the Germans call ein Büchernarr. See here for my ever expanding library.
I completed my MA in philosophy, history and sociology at the University of Leipzig, Germany, with a thesis on Frege and Husserl on sense and meaning, before undertaking a doctorate on the semantics of descriptive singular terms at the University of Oxford, completed in 2006 with a DPhil. After that, I spent five years at Trinity College and Jesus College at Oxford as a lecturer in philosophy. I joined the Department of Philosophy at the University of Kent in 2011.
Here is an overview about my most recent books:
In 2012 I published a book on Frege’s logic, offering a critical discussion of philosophical issues surrounding Frege’s logic, especially as presented in his Begriffsschrift (1879), for instance his function-theoretic conception of the content of judgements. The book aims to demonstrate, using Frege's example, that philosophy is not a mathematical discipline, in spite of a mistaken assumption in contemporary analytic philosophy.
In 2018, I published Kant, God and Metaphysics: The Secret Thorn, an attempt to re-evaluate Kant's metaphysics. Kant is widely acknowledged as one of the most important modern philosophers. He undertook his famous critical turn to save human freedom and morality from the challenge of determinism and materialism. Intertwined with his metaphysical interests, however, he also had theological commitments, which have received insufficient attention. He believed that man is a fallen creature and in need of ‘redemption’. This book aims to recover the focal point and inner contradictions of his thought, the ‘secret thorn’ of his metaphysics (as Heidegger once put it). It first locates Kant in the tradition of reflection on the human weakness from Luther to Hume, and then engages in a critical, but charitable, manner with Kant’s entire pre-critical work, including his posthumous fragments. Special attention is given to The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763), one of the most difficult, interesting and underestimated of Kant’s works. My book engages with both Anglophone and continental scholarship, and deploys modern analytical tools to make sense of Kant.
My current research is focused on political philosophy and environmental ethics/sustainability. I am currently working on a book on the idea of communal ownership (e.g. of the atmosphere), likely to be completed in 2024.
I also have an interest in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and the relation between philosophy and poetry. I have translated three books by Romanian writers into German. I have an interest in the study of totalitarianism (such as fascism and communism), and the ethics of memory (as related to genocides such as the Armenian or Jewish one). I have edited and translated the diary of Mihail Sebastian, a Romanian-Jewish writer who witnessed the rise of fascism; it received an important prize in Germany in 2006.
I am member of the UK Kant Society and the Aristotelian Society, and a reviewer for the AHRC, OUP, Routledge, Columbia University Press, Bloomsbury, Lexington Books, Mind, Philosophical Quarterly, Kantian Review, Philosophical Studies, Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, Theoria, and other journals.
I am what the Germans call ein Büchernarr. See here for my ever expanding library.