Research

Current research

My current work argues for the importance of Hegel’s aesthetics to his idea of freedom. I emphasize that Hegel views social life as essentially limited in its ability to realize freedom, because it depends on us developing a habitual, and hence unreflective, attitude towards social norms—they become “second nature”. Art suspends this habitual attitude by making us reflect on social norms as having a meaning that self-reflective (“spiritual”) beings such as ourselves can reconstruct and change. The project is an attempt to clarify the role of art in thinking about freedom. I argue that emancipatory thinking cannot focus solely on social and political questions. But instead of seeing art as either an escape from politics, or as itself essentially political, I argue that Hegel offers a plausible delimitation of the questions that should be solved by social and political institutions and those that art (and the rest of “absolute spirit”) can better address. Art is a form of what I call “normative lingering“: a contemplation of social norms which suspends their immediate practical bindingness and instead explores the underlying meaning, and potential contradictions, of the concept of freedom they aim to realize.

Future projects

I am planning to expand my current research program in three directions:

  • Aesthetic normativity: I will argue that aesthetic freedom provides a substantial yet underdetermined criterion for judging works of art. This leaves room for aesthetic criticism while preserving art’s philosophical importance.

  • Both Hegel and Schelling argue that a certain kind of freedom is only possible by way of some form of relationship to “the absolute.” I aim to defend Hegel’s version of this argument by claiming that, while it more expansive than typically recognized by the literature, it allows us to understand the compatibility of “absolute freedom“ with personal and social freedom better than Schelling’s account.

  • In the future, I aim to systematically reconstruct the relevance of Hegel’s concept of absolute spirit for a contemporary understanding of the emancipatory potential of tradition: How, in a world characterized by cultural pluralism and widespread, often justified, skepticism towards canonical ways of thinking, can we learn to see our cultural heritage as a resource for getting clearer on what freedom means, and on how we can live freer lives than we do today?

I am also collaborating on a short experimental film based on my current research. More information on this coming soon.

Publications

“Reconstructing the Distorted Experience of Oppression: Hermeneutical Injustice and Ideology.” Constellations, 29:3 (2022), 269-282: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12576

“La renaissance du jugement esthétique : de Arendt à Lyotard, du beau au sublime.” Claudio Rozzoni, Anne Elisabeth Sejten (eds.), Revisiter le sublime (Milan: Mimesis, 2021).

“Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man.” The Point, issue 26, December 2021.

Under review

  • One paper on Hegel’s concept of second nature

  • One paper outlining the development of aesthetic freedom from Kant to Hegel