Peer-Reviewed Articles
“Children’s Citizenship and the Built Environment.” Political Science Reviewer (accepted).
The proper site of children’s civic formation is hotly contested in political theory. Theorists debate whether the proper locus of such formation ought to be primarily public or private. To address this question, I set aside the current terms of debate and consider the locus of civic formation rather more literally and physically, specifically by turning to the built environment. Drawing from works in political theory, psychology, sociology, and urban planning, I sketch an ecumenical vision of the built environment, arguing that partisans in children’s citizenship debates both ought to support an anti-sprawl, mixed-use built environment that physically intermeshes the public and private spheres. This ecumenical vision, perhaps ironically, challenges a dominant assumption that the suburbs – specifically in their common, single-use zoned form – are the most suitable environment for children.
“Cosmopolitan Localism: Augustine on Place and Contingency.” History of Political Thought Vol. 44, No. 3 (2023): 484-502.
Augustine is not included among the many ancient thinkers that Martha Nussbaum draws upon for her cosmopolitan project. This is surprising both because Augustine is often read as a cosmopolitan and because Nussbaum engages with and critiques him on other related matters, particularly the purported 'otherworldliness' of this thought. This article remedies this lack, putting Augustine into conversation with Nussbaum's cosmopolitanism. By investigating Augustine's view of contingency generally and the contingency of place specifically, I show that Augustine's thought supports both universal ethical concern of the sort Nussbaum praises and particular attachments to place which Nussbaum has been criticized for lacking. In addition, Augustine's view of contingency avoids the ironism of Richard Rorty's patriotism, which Nussbaum also criticizes. Augustine sees more clearly than both Nussbaum and Rorty how particular and universal commitments need not be competitive. Therefore, Augustine is not quite the cosmopolitan thinker that he is often recognized to be, but neither is he the severely otherworldly thinker that Nussbaum reads him as.
“Small-Town Life and Difference.” American Political Thought Vol. 12, No. 3 (2023): 295-318.
Political theory and related disciplines often carry the assumption that the small-town ideal of community is essentially homogenous and difference denying. Against this widely shared assumption, and by drawing on the work of Wendell Berry and bell hooks, this article argues instead that the small-town ideal of community, when fully adhered to, is one that respects difference, rather than necessitating homogeneity. The flourishing of small-town life requires a recognition of difference akin to Iris Marion Young’s description of “city life and difference.” To make this argument, the article examines both American political thought and recent ethnographic work before developing Berry’s and hooks’s difference-welcoming ideal of “beloved community.”
“Re-Creation and Preservation: Augustine and Hobbes on Pride and Fallen Politics.” Journal of Religious Ethics Vol. 50, No. 2 (2022): 175-95.
Many scholars in religious ethics and political theory read Augustine's emphasis on pride as tied to a pessimism about politics and human nature as well as a neutralist vision of politics. Against these views, this essay argues that Augustine's vision of political humility is at once tied to a thick, non-neutralist vision of the good and a limited view of politics' role in achieving this good on its own. To make this argument, I compare Augustine's largely neglected commentary on Genesis with that of Hobbes, a political pessimist with whom Augustine is often compared. While Hobbes's political combatting of pride adheres to a vision of mere “preservation,” Augustine's instead entails a vision of “re-creation.” Political re-creation is aspirational, participating in a re-instantiation of creation's order, but it is also limited, since (re-)creation is ultimately the work of God.
Working Papers
“Ascetic Pluralism: Augustine, Creation, and the Politics of Monasticism”
Perhaps no contemporary scholar has as thoroughly used Augustine as a foil for his own pluralistic politics as William Connolly. While many scholars in political theory and religious studies have engaged with Connolly’s critique of Augustine, scarce attention has been given to a key line of Connolly’s argument concerning Augustine’s alleged anti-pluralism: namely, that its most elaborate expression is found in the social life of the monastery. I argue that Augustine’s monastic vision is not the paradigmatic expression of authoritarianism and difference-quashing that Connolly reads it as but is instead a guide for living with and loving one’s fellow citizens in the midst of differences. Even still, while I disagree with Connolly’s reading of Augustinian monasticism, I heartily agree with Connolly that Augustine’s monastic politics must be understood in light of the ontology that undergirds it - namely, creation ex nihilo. Where Connolly and I differ is on whether the results of this theological derivation are politically salutary. While Connolly finds Augustine’s account of creation ex nihilo the source of monastic plurality-denial, I find creation ex nihilo a key resource for an openness to and love of the other as expressed in Augustine’s monastic vision.
“Strange Familiarity: Beyond the Urban-Rural Divide”
Recent studies of the urban-rural divide do not question enough our assumptions about essential features of urban and rural life. One such assumption – a commonplace of our contemporary social imaginary – is that urban and rural life are inherently opposed and respectively embody the characteristics of “strangeness” and “familiarity.” This paper calls for an alternative social imaginary that does not see the urban-rural divide as inevitable, but rather a violation of values city and small-town life can and should share. These values are encapsulated in what this paper terms “strange familiarity.” After tracing our wrongheaded assumptions about urban and rural life in our contemporary social imaginary and classical social theory, this paper sketches an alternative social imaginary by drawing upon Georg Simmel, bell hooks, and Marshall Berman.
“Realism in Love: Reading Augustine with Raymond Geuss”
Some thinkers identify Augustine as a political realist because of his perceived pessimism and emphasis on human sinfulness. Other, more recent thinkers argue that Augustine is not a realist. These thinkers emphasize not the role of sin but instead the centrality of love in Augustine’s thought. However, despite these interpretive disagreements, the opposing parties in this debate nevertheless agree that if Augustine is to be counted as a political realist, the grounds for doing so lie in his emphasis on sin and a resulting pessimism about human nature and politics. Against this consensus, I read Augustine as a realist but precisely because of the centrality of love in his thought. I do so by engaging the thought of contemporary realist Raymond Geuss. While Geuss rejects the theological foundations of Augustine’s political thought, he rather surprisingly commends Augustine’s account of love as a response to the contingent features of our lives. Geuss sees this account of love as consonant with his own realist project insofar as Augustine’s emphasis on love recognizes the limits of reason and the inescapability of contingency in our political arrangements. Geuss thereby helps us see how Augustinian realism might be grounded in something other than sin and pessimism. Yet, the connection between love and contingency that Geuss prizes in Augustine is reliant upon the theological framework – particularly creatio ex nihilo - which Geuss rejects.
Book Reviews
Review of Augustine our Contemporary: Examining the Self in Past and Present, edited by Willemien Otten and Susan E. Schreiner, Augustinian Studies Vol. 50, No. 2 (2019): 251-254.