Ancient Philosophy, Normative Epistemology and Ethics

My current research is on ancient epistemology, in particular skepticism, and on philosophy of action. My book Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato (intro chapter penultimate, pdf) is forthcoming from OUP. The question that interests me both in ancient philosophy and ethics is to what extent knowledge is integral to a good life. What kind of values are knowledge and truth? What makes mere belief inferior? What is the nature of ignorance? My next project, Desiring the Good, aims to bring ancient theories of motivation into conversation with contemporary discussions. In papers on the Symposium, the Philebus, Plato’s views on madness, and on Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics, I argue that the standard Guise of the Good account of motivation (that, in being motivated, the agent judges something to be good) holds primarily for motivation that relates to what we want for our lives as whole. I aim to develop a theory of motivation that integrates the analysis of large-scale motivation to have one’s live go well (in my terminology, Background Motivation) with the analysis of mid-scale motivations for pursuits as well as small-scale motivations for particular actions. I have published on ancient skepticism, Plato, Stoic philosophy, Kantian ethics, and on a cherished side-interest: the role of friendship and enmity in our ethical lives. I am the author of the SEP articles on Ancient Skepticism and on Seneca. My first book Skepsis und Lebenspraxis (1998) discusses skeptical belief, language, and action (abstract in English, pdf), and my second book Law, Reason, and the Cosmic City (2008, paperback 2012) looks more closely at the philosophy of the most forceful ancient critics of skepticism, the Stoics. Though I think that the Stoics lose against the skeptics as far as epistemological questions are concerned, I consider their ethical outlook and conception of reason eminently interesting.