Research

Journal Articles

"Institutions in the 'French Sense': Gustav Hugo and Hegel's Institutionalization of Ethical Life." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie. Forthcoming. [Preprint]
Hegel’s institutionalization of ethical life (Sittlichkeit) is widely regarded as among his most important contributions to philosophy. Yet despite the centrality of institutions to his thought, Hegel’s theory of institutions has received little attention from commentators. In this article, I contribute to redressing this oversight by examining Hegel’s institutional theory in its historical context. Specifically, I argue that Gustav Hugo’s critical review of the Philosophy of Right elucidates its originality. Hugo’s review reveals that Hegel breaks with the Roman-German institutional tradition, represented by Roman law and himself, by synthesizing it with the French institutional tradition, exemplified by Montesquieu. However, pace Hugo, I contend that Hegel preserves a central aspect of the Roman-German institutional tradition in this synthesis: the desideratum that institutions be adequately codified. Appreciating Hegel’s synthesis of these two traditions illuminates the role of institutions in the Philosophy of Right and his contribution to the history of the concept.
"Apriorism and Scientific Cooperation in Hegel." Hegel Bulletin (2025): 1–31. Advance online publication. [doi:10.1017/hgl.2025.10067]
Hegel's commentators often attribute to his system some form of apriorism, the view that the system's content or its justification (or both) are independent of experience and empirical science. In this article, I argue that apriorism conflicts with Hegel's commitment to cooperation between the philosophical and empirical sciences, as outlined in §§1–18 of the 1830 Encyclopaedia. I do so by attributing two theses to Hegel: scientific cooperation—that knowledge arises through a process of conceptual transformation which requires an intellectual division of labour between the philosophical and empirical sciences; and incompatibility—that scientific cooperation entails a feedback loop between the philosophical and empirical sciences, rendering the concepts of Hegel's system empirically revisable, and so not a priori. Although these two theses hold across all the philosophical sciences, I focus on their application in logic, as it is in logic where apriorist interpretations appear the most justified. Reimagining a scientifically cooperative Hegel not only supports naturalist readings of his system but also reframes the task of philosophical critique. Critique, on the scientific-cooperative reading I propose, aims to exposit the insights, discoveries, and theories of the empirical sciences, furthering their ends by ameliorating their conceptual apparatus, not to debunk them.
"Schelling's Metametaphysical Critique of Hegel." International Journal of Philosophical Studies 32, no. 5 (2024): 725–51. [doi:10.1080/09672559.2024.2418619]
This article defends Hegel against Schelling's critique that his system can only comprehend actuality but cannot explain it. It does so while granting Schelling his basic premise, namely, that Hegel's system is entirely logical. Hegel's account of comprehension effectively answers Schelling's ‘despairing' question: why is there something rather than nothing? In the first part, I reconstruct Schelling's critique, showing that he takes Hegel's system to be entirely logical; as logical, a priori, and as a priori, unable to explain existence. In the second part, I advance a moderately deflationary reading of Hegel on which philosophy, as comprehending cognition, guarantees the non-vacuity of its categories by deriving them through conceptually transforming the universals of empirical science. Given its compellingness as a response to Schelling's critique, this moderately deflationary reading warrants further development as an interpretation of Hegel's thought.
"Hölderlin's Politics of the New Mythology." Journal of Speculative Philosophy 37, no. 3 (2023): 369–80. [doi:10.5325/jspecphil.37.3.0369] []
This article reevaluates Hölderlin's social and political thought in the 1790s. Against Georg Lukács, it argues that Hölderlin's politics of the new mythology, while utopian, are not mystical. In the Fragment of Philosophical Letters and the Oldest System-Programme of German Idealism, Hölderlin instead articulates two fundamental claims. Socially, the new mythical collectivity must elevate (erheben) the social relations produced by bourgeois society, exalting them in aesthetic-religious form, rather than sublating (aufheben) them, modifying both their form and their content. Politically, realizing this new collectivity requires transcending the state, and so is essentially revolutionary. Hölderlin's prosaic writings thus supplement Hyperion's romantic critique of modernity. They take as their point of departure a sober exposition of the social relations of the market emerging in Hölderlin's time and, from within these relations, excavate a new mythical collectivity capable of suturing the fragmentary divisions of modern life.

Book Chapters & Conference Proceedings

"Institutions or Interaction? Hegel's Critique of Fichte Reconsidered." In Fichte's Practical Philosophy, edited by Benjamin Crowe and Gabriel Gottlieb. De Gruyter Brill. Forthcoming. [Preprint]
In the practical sphere, Hegel's critique of Fichte often falls under the rubric of “individualism” or “subjectivism.” By establishing the voice of conscience as the unassailable criterion of the morality of an action, Fichte unjustly sets up one's subjectivity as the final arbitrator of morality. Or, by assuming “universal egoism” in his deduction of the commonwealth, Fichte atomizes the state's foundations. In this retelling, Hegel rectifies Fichtean subjectivism by grounding the claims of morality and right within an institutional framework of the state, civil society, and the family, supplanting morality and abstract right with an institutionalized theory of Sittlichkeit. But however accurate such a rubric may be in broad outline, it cannot do justice to what is, I believe, most challenging and interesting in Fichte's practical philosophy: that in it, Fichte equally incorporates a tendency towards communitarianism, conditioning the content of morality and right by the reciprocal interaction among members of a community. Fichte's practical philosophy, one might say, is constituted by its oscillation between these two antithetical principles or tendencies, not its adherence to one or the other. This is my first contention in this chapter. My second contention concerns Hegel's critique of Fichte. If I am right that Fichte's practical philosophy cannot be adequately grasped as subjectivist or individualist, then Hegel's critique of Fichte must also be revised on pain of misunderstanding its target. The best terrain for articulating this revision, I suggest, lies in their diverging theories of institutions, as this is the practical domain in which subjectivity and objectivity most thoroughly interpenetrate and, therefore, in which Fichte's oscillation can be most readily perceived.
"Hegel and Fichte on Institutional Content." Hegel-Jahrbuch. Forthcoming. [Preprint]

Book Reviews

Review of Adorno, Politics, and the Aesthetic Animal by Caleb J. Basnett. University of Toronto Press, 2021. Phenomenological Reviews (2022). [Available online]

Work in Progress

"Visions of Community at the University of Berlin: Kant, Fichte, Schleiermacher" (R&R) [Draft]
This article examines Kant, Fichte, and Schleiermacher on the university. I argue that in their proposals for the new University of Berlin, Fichte and Schleiermacher advance an internal criticism of Kant’s justification of the university, raising two problems for it. First, they see Kant’s justification of the university as resting on a pernicious separation of the scholarly and civil communities—the ethical problem. Second, they doubt Kant’s ability to establish the university as the optimal institutional form of higher education—the institutional problem. Overcoming these two problems, they contend, requires envisioning a more radical community to be established at the University of Berlin, one involving the communal formation of students, knowledge, scientific research, and society.
"The Liberal Subject in Hobbes's Leviathan" (R&R) [Draft]
Hobbes's relation to liberalism remains a matter of contentious debate in contemporary political philosophy. In this article, I exposit one underappreciated aspect of Hobbes's contribution to liberal thought, namely his theory of political subjectivity as developed in Leviathan. Building on the work of Leo Strauss and C. B. Macpherson, I argue that Hobbes advances a two-sided theory of political subjectivity, one that unifies the political subject's status as a natural being, attuned by her nature to the market, and as an artificial entity instituted by law and bearing inalienable rights. These two aspects, I argue, are not independent but mutually support Hobbes's liberalism.
"Hegel on Institutional Ontology"
Hegel has long been criticized for attributing a pernicious objectivity to institutions. According to his critics, Hegel holds that institutions exist over and above the individuals who really sustain them, like ghostly spirits hovering among us, with disastrous normative consequences. In this article, I develop a new interpretation of Hegel’s social ontology of institutions that better explains the objectivity that Hegel ascribes to them. Hegel, I argue, understands institutions, such as marriage and the estates, to be social forms—meso-level social structures that fulfill certain functions, which, as such, are capable of existing independently of individuals’ representations of them. So understood, Hegel’s institutional ontology is capable of mitigating recent versions the objectivity objection: strong institutionalism, over-institutionalization, and mind-independent social spirits. To conclude, I consider some reasons why Hegel’s institutional ontology should serve as a guide for social research, dovetailing with contemporary interest in nonideal social ontology.
"Wrong Institutions: On Hegel's (Normative) Dispute with Gustav Hugo"
In his review of the Philosophy of Right, Gustav Hugo, an influential jurist and forerunner of legal positivism, raises a peculiar objection to Hegel’s work. In his rebuttal to Hegel’s critique of positive right in §3A, Hugo attacks him for conceiving of institutions in the “French sense,” which Hugo contrasts with the Roman-German sense of this term. In §3A, Hegel had praised the Roman jurists for inventing legal fictions (fictio legis) to evade the “unjust [ungerechten] and abominable [abscheulichen] institutions” of Roman law (PR §3A/GW 14,1:30). Quoting this passage, Hugo complains: “the word [is] often used here in the French sense [Französischen Sinne], where it is opposed to institutes and instituts, but [it] has little in common with institutiones of the Romans, which we otherwise call by that name in German” (VRP 1:378–79). Although Hugo makes this criticism only in passing, it raises, I shall argue, fundamental questions about the nature of wrong and its relation to institutions in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, such as: What does it mean for Hegel to assert that Roman law’s institutions are “unjust”? How could this evaluation be justified within the science of right (Rechtswissenschaft)? Why is this to speak of institutions in the “French sense”?

In this presentation, I investigate Hegel’s dispute with Hugo in order to examine the role of unjust or wrong institutions in his Philosophy of Right. In particular, considering Hugo’s criticism that Hegel adopts a “French” concept of institutions illuminates two of its normative features. First, it shows us not only that institutions can be criticized as wrong from within the science of right, a point which Hugo disputes, but also how Hegel’s underwriting of this form of institutional critique diverges from post-Kantian natural law theories. Second, it indicates three ways in which institutions can be “wrong” according to Hegel: (1) by mismatching the prevailing circumstances; (2) by being inherently unstable or prone to functional breakdown; and (3) by failing to be right and rational in themselves. Considering Hegel’s Auseinandersetzung with Hugo reveals the centrality and diversity of institutional “wrong” in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, and how the critique of wrong institutions coheres with the end of reconciliation.
Hegel's Theory of Institutions: Social Ontology, Transformation, and Critique in Ethical Life