Hofstra Philosophy Department Newsletter

After graduating from Hofstra in 2019, I entered the PhD program in philosophy at Villanova University. I'm currently working on a dissertation project focusing on the concept of the general will in Jean-Jacques Rousseau and subsequent political philosophers including G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Aimé Césaire, and Paulin J. Hountondji. The 20222023 academic year is my research year in my program; I spent this past autumn as a visiting researcher at the CRMEP at Kingston University in London, during which I gave a few conference presentations on material related to an in-progress thesis chapter I'm currently rounding out my research year by continuing dissertation writing, preparing for teaching, and working on other research and editorial projects None of this would have been possible without my time at Hofstra and in the philosophy department especially, where I was first introduced to Rousseau and wrote an undergraduate thesis on his work under the patient and enormously helpful direction of Dr Ira J Singer The supportive environment at Hofstra philosophy was largely responsible for instilling in me a high valuation of academic mentorship and community.

awarded a Firestone Fellowship, allowing me to pursue research full time, assisted by Dr John Krapp The topic we were exploring was the Limit of Reason, or more specifically, the conflict between our reason and intuitions It is often the case that when faced with ethical dilemmas, the actions prescribed by our intuitions contradict those prescribed by theories and principles developed by philosophy through reason After more closely scrutinizing “intuition” and “reason” and the means by which we develop judgements and prescriptions of actions using either, it seems that both are, when taken alone, unable to provide us with deductively verifiable guidance on these matters. Due to the nature of normative claims, and our difficulty verifying inductive and empirical claims, it seems we need to build our rational arguments on the back of some assumptions, the majority of which will be informed by our intuitions. If we wish to continue making value-laden statements and building arguments upon them, we must acknowledge this fact, so that we may do away with the pretense of deductive certainty and be more critically aware of how we authorize ethical claims