Personal Biography
I joined Corpus Christi in July 2017. Before that, I was a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. And before that, I taught at Brigham Young University and Stanford Law School. I did an undergraduate degree in philosophy and political science at Brigham Young University, a master’s degree in philosophy at Boston College, a law degree (juris doctor) at Harvard University, and a PhD in philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. I wrote my dissertation on the concept of truth (with a special focus on the thought of Martin Heidegger and Donald Davidson).
Research
I work in the existential and phenomenological tradition of European Philosophy. I’m particularly interested in the phenomenology of action and agency, and the phenomenology of religious life. In recent years, I’ve published a number of articles on authenticity (the ideal of being responsible for oneself – for who one is). I’ve also written about Kierkegaard’s existential account of human existence and the paradoxical character of religious faith. I’ve recently completed work on the Cambridge Heidegger Lexicon, as well as on a new entry on Heidegger for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I am working on a book project exploring approaches to ontology in the tradition of existential phenomenology.
Teaching
• Post-Kantian Philosophy (at both the undergraduate and graduate level). I offer tutorials in all 7 figures on the Post-Kantian paper: Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty.
• Philosophy of Religion
• Ethics
• General Philosophy and Moral Philosophy
Selected Publications
Phenomenology and Human Existence (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2020).
The Cambridge Heidegger Lexicon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger’s Being and Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
Heidegger and Unconcealment: Truth, Language and History (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
How to Read Heidegger (London: Granta, 2005; U.S. edition: W. W. Norton, March 2006).