Book monograph, Plato and Aristotle on Motivation and Agency (in progress).

This book offers a novel reading of Plato and Aristotle’s theories of agency and motivation, and their moral psychological, and ethical implications. It provides an account of executive dispositions and virtues in these authors and their role in acting well or failing to act as one should. As is well known, Plato and Aristotle are interested in the processes and deliberations that lead someone to make the right decisions and practical judgements. They are also concerned with appetites and pleasures that can sweep us off our feet, distract us, or compel us to act against these practical judgments. But these authors, I argue, are also keenly aware that we often fail to do what we should, and have resolved to do, because we lack the strength, grit, and perseverance to stick to our commitments, even in the absence of appetitive temptations. For Plato and Aristotle, indolence, irresoluteness, weakness, or softness are failures of agency that have distinctive moral psychological underpinnings and give rise to distinct ethical profiles. At the same time, they argue that resoluteness, strength, and perseverance are valuable character dispositions and traits, which should be habituated, trained, and nurtured. For these authors, executive strength is a condition for living up to one’s own considered commitments and for excelling in both personal and political projects. The book offers a new interpretation of spirit (thumos) and thumotic motivations and characters, lack of self-control (akrasia), weakness (astheneia), softness (malakia), self-control (enkrateia), industriousness (philoponia), and endurance (karteria). Furthermore, the distinctions defended in this book provide an interpretive framework for Plato and Aristotle’s much-discussed claims about the agency of women and some groups of non-Greeks.

Edited Volume (with André Rehbinder), Plato’s Phaedrus: A Critical Guide, Cambridge University Press (under contract).

This volume focuses on philosophical topics in the Phaedrus, one of Plato’s most widely read dialogues. This collection of essays will explore philosophical themes in this dialogue, as opposed to primarily literary, rhetorical, or historical aspects. The essays will cover topics ranging from the nature and structure of the soul, agency, species of motivation, responsibility, self-knowledge, the nature of love, friendship, and erotic desire, the differences between doxa, episteme, and pistis, the connection between dialectic, rhetoric, and philosophy, and the function of dialogue and written speech. Some of the essays will also tackle general questions regarding the structure and unity of the dialogue, and its relationship to other Platonic texts, such as the Symposium, Republic, Theaetetus, and Timaeus.