Below you’ll find some descriptions of several of my research projects.

Dissertation

I’m currently finishing my dissertation on the early development of the concept of nature (φύσις or φυή/φυά) in Greek poetry and philosophy, and the significance for that development of certain metaphors, especially ones relating to the plant (or φυτόν). For the dissertation (as opposed to the projected extension of the project) I’m focusing on just two authors, Pindar and Empedocles, whose writings contain exceptional uses of the concept and the metaphors in question. The recent and widespread renewal of interest in nature and vegetation (literal and metaphorical), in these authors among many others, demands a fresh and fine-grained assessment of the evidence, both with regard to the precise concepts of nature operating in the different corpora, and with regard to the precise significance of vegetal metaphors within them. On my account, the latter is not limited to more purely conceptual implications, for instance the implicit teleology (or lack thereof) of plant metaphors in contrast with ones drawn from craft, but includes the more ideological aspects of such images amid the discourse on nature—for instance, the elite appropriation of agricultural metaphors. The project thus raises a number of methodological questions, primarily concerning the historical study of concepts (Begriffsgeschichte and the History of Ideas) and that of metaphors (Metaphorologie). In those regards I’ve drawn much inspiration from Hans Blumenberg, whose work on metaphorology (as he called it) is exemplary of deep historical analyses of metaphors in their significance for life and for the most abstract theory, and also Olga Freidenberg, whose Image and Concept contains insights into the role of metaphor in early Greek intellectual history in particular. One further aspect of this project is a consideration of how scholars and other interpreters have fixated upon the plant as the most natural image for Nature, and how that image continues to be put to varied ideological use in current scholarship and theory.

My dissertation work has led to an exciting collaboration with Arnaud Macé and Alessandro Buccheri. We’ve organized a series of webinars and planned two conferences on the subject of φύσις καὶ φυτά, or “nature and plants.” Please see our website for more details.

other projects

“. . . in the first place, I seek to follow through the verbal elaboration of a given concept from its historical roots to the most modern ramifications (and here it may happen that a newspaper clipping will find its place in a sequence including pre-Socratic fragments) . . .” —Leo Spitzer

DAEMONOLOGY

Another project or set of projects that I intend to pursue (and almost pursued as my dissertation) is on the figure of the daemon (δαίμων) and the daemonic (τὸ δαιμόνιον), various aspects of which have taken shape through my studies with Kirk Sanders and Lowell Edmunds (the Socratic employment), Elizabeth Asmis (the Stoic and Neoplatonic), and Boris Maslov (the Homeric and Pindaric).

NIETZSCHE AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY

I’ve worked on several papers concerning Nietzsche’s relationship to classical antiquity and his philological training, ranging from his reception of Pindar and Aeschylus to his employment of the words crux, nux, lux (“cross, nut, light”) and ephexis (“stopping, checking”?). At bottom, all the papers may be said to revolve around the question of the limits of knowledge, self-knowledge included—except for the one on crux, nux, lux, which has more to do with explaining that droll triad (largely by way of Nietzsche’s fondness for Nüssen or nuts, both literal and metaphorical), but which also has something to do with Nietzsche’s habit of leaving little riddles for his readers, with the aim of unsettling our certainties about his texts, about ourselves, etc.

The politics of early greek philosophy

The origin of philosophy in ancient Greece is of course an ideologically loaded topic, although the political dimensions of any given interpretation may be somewhat hidden. The title is meant to raise a number of questions. What, so far as we can tell, were the political leanings of the early Greek philosophers? And to what extent does early Greek philosophy display the influence of politics? Do the conceptions of cosmic justice and even the argumentative standards display a more or less conscious commitment to an egalitarian ideal or an elitist one? Last but not least, how have the political allegiances of historians of philosophy colored our understanding of philosophy’s putative origins?