Research

Two threads run through this work. The first is epistemic: what Merleau-Ponty calls motivation names a ground of knowledge distinct from both reason and natural causality, and reopens debates about perceptual justification, foundationalism, and skepticism. The second is intentional: perception has a content — perceptual sense — irreducible to conceptual and sensory content alike, which neither realism nor representationalism can accommodate. Recent work presses the anti-representationalist argument toward a relational account of awareness, and extends the question of perceptual content to categorization.

Books

Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy of Perception: The Content and World of Perception Routledge Research in Phenomenology. New York: Routledge, 2023.

Motivation and the Primacy of Perception: Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Knowledge Series in Continental Thought. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2021.

Under contract

Monograph: Representation and Awareness: A Phenomenological Sketch. Routledge.
Anthology: Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings, 2nd edition. Editor. Routledge.
Volume: Motivation and Temporality. Co-edited with Christos Hadjioannou and Nikos Soueltzis. Routledge.

Edited volumes and special issues

2025: Motivation and Time in Phenomenology. Special issue of International Journal of Philosophical Studies 33 (5): 511–704. Co-edited with Christos Hadjioannou and Nikos Soueltzis.

Peer-reviewed articles

Forthcoming: “Color as Measure of the World.” New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, special issue Phenomenological and Direct Realism, edited by Daniel Neumann and Alexander Ehmann.
2023: “Mitigating Tensions between Phenomenology and Critique.” Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology 6 (2): 6–23.
2023: “Can There Be an Existentialist Virtue Ethics?” The Journal of Value Inquiry 57 (1): 1–20.
2022: “Motivation as an Epistemic Ground.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 21: 775–90.
2021: “Why Phenomenology Doesn’t Need Disjunctivism: Merleau-Ponty on Intentionality and Transcendence.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 38 (1): 81–102.
2020: “Merleau-Ponty’s Account of Appearances.” Idealistic Studies 50 (2): 99–119.
2020: “Merleau-Ponty on Hallucination and Perceptual Faith.” Études Phénoménologiques — Phenomenological Studies 4: 49–66.
2019: “Perceptual Experience in Kant and Merleau-Ponty.” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 50 (3): 220–33.
2018: “Merleau-Ponty’s Theory of Preconceptual Generalities and Concept Formation.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 35 (3): 279–97.
2018: “Autobiography and the Phenomenology of Personal Identity in Merleau-Ponty.” Life Writing 15 (3): 431–45.

Chapters and reference articles

Forthcoming: “Motivation, Institution, and Time in Merleau-Ponty.” In Motivation and Temporality, edited by Peter Antich, Christos Hadjioannou, and Nikos Soueltzis. Routledge.
Forthcoming: “The Element as Non-Object.” In Experience and Non-Objects: Toward the Phenomenology of Scientific or Religious Indiscernibles, edited by Michael Barber and Olga Louchakova-Schwartz. Bloomsbury.
2024: “Perception, as a Theme in Phenomenology.” In Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, edited by Ted Toadvine and Nicolas de Warren. Springer.
2019: “Autobiography and the Phenomenology of Personal Identity in Merleau-Ponty.” In Philosophy and Life Writing, edited by D. L. LeMahieu and C. Cowley. Routledge.

Reviews and introductions

2025: “Motivation and Time in Phenomenology,” with Christos Hadjioannou and Nikos Soueltzis. Introduction to special issue, International Journal of Philosophical Studies 33 (5).
2019: Review of The Other in Perception: A Phenomenological Account of Our Experience of Other Persons, by Susan Bredlau. Phenomenological Reviews.
2018: Review of Toward a Phenomenology of Addiction, by Frank Schalow. Phenomenological Reviews.