Writing

He and I

November 2021 / 1769 words

He and I are walking towards the river on Clouet Street on our way to Mass. It is quarter to eight on a Sunday morning. We are smoking cigarettes a…

story

Thoughts on deciding to paddle the Mississippi River

July 2018 / 875 words

I graduated from college in May of this year. When I finished high school, I was convinced that institutional education was the tool of an authorit…

A night in Birmingham on July 3, 2018

July 2018 / 2205 words

After dinner Claire and I go to the porch to smoke a cigarette. From her porch we see the sun setting on the horizon. To the south of Birmingham th…

story

An Assessment of Kant’s Transcendental Solution to the Third Antinomy

May 2018 / 2980 words

The preface of the second edition of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason contains what I understand to be the most appropriate characterization of his g…

assignment philosophy metaphysics freedom

Love as a Transgressive Impulse of the Boundary-Creating Self

April 2018 / 3265 words

The primary activity of the human intellect, at least as it exists in the Western (European) cultural and philosophical tradition in which I find m…

assignment philosophy metaphysics psychology

Some thoughts on economy as community

March 2018 / 1299 words

I was born into a tradition of middle-class American suburban existence at the turn of the millennium. I grew up in communities — schools, sports t…

Thoughts on the Empiricist / Rationalist debate and Kantian metaphysics

February 2018 / 1784 words

I have experienced an overwhelming concern with one primary intellectual debate for several years now, which I will introduce as the “rationalist v…

philosophy metaphysics

The Divided Soul and Dostoevsky’s Polyphonic Response to Plato

April 2017 / 2917 words

The name which Dostoevsky gives to the protagonist of Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov, comes from ‘raskol’ — Russian for ‘schism’ or ‘split.’ It …

assignment philosophy literature freedom psychology

Akrasia and the divided soul

April 2017 / 4579 words

‘Akrasia’, a Greek term used to indicate an agent acting against his own better judgment, has been widely explored in philosophical literature as a…

assignment philosophy freedom psychology

Idealism vs. materialism

March 2017 / 333 words

In the worldview of most modern, classical, and even religious idealists, the material world is an unreliable, less beautiful, somewhat distorted a…

philosophy metaphysics

Hume as only epistemically skeptical of causation

December 2016 / 1580 words

David Hume is widely recognized for his examination of the concept of causation and its significance in human perception. In his Enquiry Concerning…

assignment philosophy metaphysics

Sewer Grate

May 2016 / 330 words

It was always about words, or the lack thereof.

I remember when you told me that
the right way to smoke a cigarette was to
…

poetry

Motion as an Effective Path to Truth

April 2016 / 664 words

There are many good reasons that human beings tend to stay in one place. There are simple reasons, like familiarity, which leads to safety (a biolo…

philosophy

The Key Food Mart on Rampart Street

March 2016 / 1354 words

This semester I dropped out of school to read books, travel and drink beer with homeless people, which I’ve found is sometimes more educational and…

story

Truth is Beauty, Beauty is Truth?

February 2016 / 470 words

It is beautiful
to conquer distance with a motor
effortlessly, spontaneously
to change surroundings and
quench the mad thir…

poetry

Membership in a Moral Community is Not Necessary for the Possession of Rights

April 2015 / 3113 words

In an article entitled “The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research,” University of Michigan law professor Carl Cohen asserts that the p…

assignment philosophy