Charity. That is, the virtue of excellent love—not the more specific virtues of giving money or being kind to dialectical opponents. I think charity is a more important virtue than it is commonly given credit for in contemporary philosophy (with the notable exception of explicitly Christian work). I take a Thomistic view of what charity is—i.e., friendship with God—though I think any decent ethical theory, even a secular one, needs some understanding of charity.

One runs into all sorts of questions from there: how does charity relate to justice or wisdom, and what does charity look like when it is imperfect or when it is perfect, and what does it mean to love something other than God from charity? In general, I first look for answers to questions like these in those I think are wise—Aquinas, Anscombe, Kierkegaard, Scotus, Augustine, and others. But, since not everything which can helpfully be said has been said already (and since, after all, what should be said depends on whom you are speaking to), I've ended up writing a few words on the subject myself, mainly in the form of a dissertation.

Action. I could also have said ‘practical reasoning’ or ‘moral psychology’. Anscombe famously argued that it is impossible to say much of anything about ethics without an underlying understanding of action and practical reason. Aristotle was brilliant on this, and for the most part, I follow him (and notable others who followed him before me). I have spent a good deal of time on the guise of the good thesis (i.e., that practical attitudes have the good as their formal object), the structure of intention and its relevance in deontic ethical systems, the nature of happiness, and the like.

I find myself particularly drawn to Aristotle’s picture of human life as having the structure of an action, (de dicto and, ideally, de re) ordered to a single all-organizing end. I have thought quite a bit (and written some) on how this picture can help us understand immortal life and the possibility of redemption. Immortal life is interesting partly as a limit-case of ordered human activity and therefore a particularly informative thought experiment, and partly because of challenges to the value of immortal life, e.g., from Bernard Williams. Redemption appeals to me partly as an interesting phenomenon in itself—as a mechanism by which an evil is, in some way, made good—and partly because a good account of it promises to have practical implications, say, in discussions about the problem of evil, or self-understanding, or forgiveness. Speaking of which….

Forgiveness. I probably should have written of it under the ‘charity’ heading, given that my views commit me to thinking that’s where it belongs. But I did my first published work on forgiveness, so I suppose it deserves a separate mention. I argued there that forgiving is usefully understood as declaring an enemy a friend with respect to a certain wrong. And I argued that that definition captures something about what forgiving is essentially, whereas most other contemporary accounts, and attitude views in particular, fail to do so. If you’d like to be convinced of my view—or to remain no more convinced than you are now but with better roots—you’re welcome to download it from my list of papers. Some neighboring topics which interest me include the relationship between forgiveness and fraternal correction (which seem to me to be the two charitable responses to wrongdoing), the possibility of tension between forgiveness and respect, and questions about reasons to forgive (or not to).

So that's a sample. You're welcome to read some of my work if you care for the details.

some major threads in my research