“Entertaining Strangers” reveals how theories and practices of hospitality shaped and were shaped by the early modern print and theater industries. Whereas earlier studies of hospitality and literature have focused on aristocratic patronage, in this dissertation I reveal the vital importance of commercial hospitality as a framework for ethical and...
Having an emotion involves having an evaluative point of view on one’s circumstances. For example, there is a sense in which being angry involves taking oneself to have been wronged, and fear seems to paint the scene as one of danger. A significant debate in contemporary philosophy of mind concerns...
The philosophical literature on modals is dominated by the following paradigm: modals are modeled as quantifiers over sets of possible worlds. The diversity of modal “fla- vors” (e.g., epistemic, deontic, teleological interpretations of modals) is accommodated within the paradigm by logical mechanisms that allow extralinguistic factors to restrict the quantificational...
Imagine someone who was raised to hold a number of irrational and objectionable beliefs. There seems to be an important sense in which they lack control over these beliefs, and so we might think they are not responsible for them. But many of our beliefs are like this: they are...
This dissertation offers a novel interpretation of Aristotle’s notion of teaching (didaskalia). In Part I, I defend my claim that we can find in Aristotle’s works a conception of teaching, which is a crucial yet under-explored part of his theory of education. In Part II, I use this interpretation to...
This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of the Pennsylvania State University. Learn more at the TOME website,... and In Original Forgiveness, Nicolas de Warren challenges the widespread assumption that forgiveness is always a response to something that has incited it. Rather than considering forgiveness exclusively in terms of an encounter between individuals or groups after injury, he argues that availability for the possibility of forgiveness represents an original...
This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of the Pennsylvania State University. Learn more at the TOME website,... and This book investigates what change is, according to Aristotle, and how it affects his conception of being. Mark Sentesy argues that change leads Aristotle to develop first-order metaphysical concepts such as matter, potency, actuality, sources of being, and the teleology of emerging things. He shows that Aristotle’s distinctive ontological claim—that...
Plato's readers struggle to reconcile his combination of conceptual argument and mimetic fiction. In this dissertation, I suggest we can understand this discomfiting combination if we understand the dialogues as "the mimesis of people in speech." Because speech is both referential and performative, speech is a hybrid of thought and...
The concept of epistemic infringement marks a novel entry into the social epistemology literature concerning epistemic misconduct. Epistemic infringement constitutively involves the systematic contravention of social and epistemic norms, particularly in a manner that serves to erode epistemic agency. This dissertation identifies epistemic infringement as a useful theoretical tool for...
In the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, I find that Aristotle endorses two distinct forms of political activity. The first form, which I term statesman activity, is intrinsically valuable. Aristotle thinks that we should value this kind of political activity because it is constitutive of human well-being. The second form, which...