Book project, Plato and Aristotle on Motivation and Agency (in progress).

This book offers a novel reading of Plato and Aristotle’s theories of agency and motivation, and their moral psychological and ethical implications. Specifically, it provides an account of the role and importance of executive tendencies, dispositions, and virtues, and their role in acting well or failing to act as one should. The view defended in this book puts emphasis on the importance of having strength, drive, and grit to carry out actions and live up to one’s commitments. Plato and Aristotle, I will argue, are not only interested in the processes and deliberations that lead to making the right decisions and coming up with correct practical judgements, nor are they solely concerned with the appetitive temptations, passions, and pleasures that can sweep us off our feet, distract us, or compel us to act against, or in favor of, these resolutions. These authors are also keenly aware that we often fail to do what we should do, we deem to be best, and have resolved to do because we do not have the strength, grit, or perseverance to stick to these commitments, even when there are no pleasures or impassioned feelings distracting us, pushing us around, or clouding our judgements. On this view, both Plato and Aristotle see indolence, irresoluteness, weakness, or softness as failures of agency that have distinctive moral psychological underpinnings and ethical profiles. At the same time, they regard resoluteness, strength, and perseverance as highly valuable character dispositions and traits, which should be developed, trained, and nurtured. For these authors, executive strength is a condition for developing and living up to one’s own considered commitments, exercising agency, and excelling in both personal and political endeavors. Along the way, the book offers an interpretation of spirit (thumos) and thumotic motivations and characters, and of lack of self-control (akrasia), weakness (astheneia), and softness (malakia), and self-control (enkrateia), industriousness (philoponia), and endurance (karteria). Furthermore, the distinctions defended in this book offer an interpretive framework to understand Plato and Aristotle’s much discussed claims about the agency of women and some groups of non-Greeks.

Crafting Race in Plato and Aristotle (co-edited with John Proios), under contract with Oxford University Press.

In recent years, we have seen a proliferation in ground-breaking work to recover historical views on marginalized identities, and to incorporate these topics into the historical narrative. As part of these efforts, a number of scholars are turning their attention to the history of race and racism. But when we look at the history of ancient Greek philosophy such topics seem conspicuously absent. There is no signicant undertaking among scholars of ancient Greek philosophy to discuss race in the works of the most central figures of ancient Greek philosophy—Plato and Aristotle—despite the fact that philosophy of race is a burgeoning field, and that scholars in fields adjacent to ancient philosophy, such as Classics and ancient history, have been developing a robust body of work on this subject (e.g. Snowden 1983, Hall 2002, Isaac 2004, Lape 2010, Kennedy et. al. 2013, McCoskey 2012 and 2021, Derbew 2022). Due to this scholarly gap, we lack a comprehensive picture of the different positions on, and assumptions about, race in the works of Plato and Aristotle. This scholarly lacuna creates, in turn, an instructional vacuum: without secondary texts to draw on, teachers of ancient Greek philosophy do not have the resources to educate students on the signicance of race in classical Greek philosophy. This volume of essays fosters conversation about these issues within the field of ancient Greek philosophy, thereby contributing to closing this gap. The contributions in this essay tackle methodological questions, examine the presence, scope, and significance of racializing discourses and arguments in the works of Plato and Aristotle, and address the reception of these philosophers’ views in later historical periods. Contributors to this volume include Toni Alimi, Cinzia Arruzza, Elena Comay del Junco, Sophia Connell, Ashley Lance, Julián Gallego, Marta Jiménez, Sukaina Hirji, Dhananjay Jagannathan, Mariska Leunissen, Hendrik Lorenz, Jackie Murray, Patrice Rankine, Christopher Raymond, Rachel Singpurwala, Adele Watkins, and Josh Wilburn.

You can learn more about this project here.