I intend to publish in the areas of critical theory, phenomenology, and German Idealism. My research focuses on debates about the inheritance of German Idealism in early Twentieth-Century German philosophy—especially the first generation of the Frankfurt School and the phenomenological tradition—by looking at the reception of Kant’s critical philosophy and German Idealism. My agenda consists of two lines of research: primarily, a critical re-appraisal of Theodor Adorno’s rationalist commitments in his polemic against the ontological appropriation of Kantian philosophy, and a broader genealogical project that traces the intertwinement of the concepts of critique [Kritik], freedom [Freiheit], and crisis [Krisis] in the German Enlightenment. 

My doctoral project—Historical Metaphysics: Adorno, Heidegger, and the Crisis of German Idealism—develops a historical and systematic reconstruction of Adorno’s critique of Martin Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. I argue that Adorno’s dispute with Heidegger must be understood as a disagreement over the programmatic import of Kant’s transcendental idealism. Reading Adorno’s critique of Heidegger through the lens of their mutual appropriation of Kant reveals, first, that they both see good reasons in Kant’s philosophy to re-think human nature as fundamentally historical, and, secondly, that they work out this thesis in conflicting ways. The upshot of my dissertation is that we can appreciate how a seemingly scholarly disagreement about epistemological and metaphysical issues has strong ramifications for our conceptions of human historicity and praxis—and hence our political possibilities as human beings. Adorno’s distinctly philosophical Marxism and Heidegger’s philosophical fascism are, I suggest, rooted in their respective orientation towards Kantian philosophy and the post-Kantian German tradition more generally.

Chapter 1 situates Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in the context of debates about the status of metaphysics in the late 18th-Century which became acute during the Pantheismusstreit. Reconstructing key elements of Kant’s transcendental idealism­—namely, the critique of speculative metaphysics and the establishment of a practical metaphysics—I demonstrate the stakes and prospects of Kant’s critical philosophy as a renewal of confidence in human reason to ground metaphysics and an adequate account of human freedom. Chapter 2 begins by situating Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant with respect to Hermann Cohen’s influential epistemological reading of Kant. It continues by reconstructing Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant as an extension of his fundamental ontology outlined in Being and Time and adjacent lectures in the 1920s. The chapter aims to show, first, that Heidegger’s Analytic of Dasein is modeled after Kant’s view on the schematism chapter, an analysis Heidegger uses to reconceive transcendental subjectivity as originally temporalizing, and, secondly, that Heidegger’s reading of Kant sheds light on his reading of German Idealism more broadly. Chapter 3 reconstructs Adorno’s interpretation of Kant as outlined in his lectures on Kant’s first Critique to, first, highlight Adorno’s anti-ontological program in his reading of Kant, and, secondly, how Adorno uses Kantian transcendental idealism to offer an epistemological-metaphysical grounding for his own version of historical materialism—namely, negative dialectics. Chapter 4 recasts Adorno’s critique of Heidegger’s ontological appropriation of Kant as an interpretive disagreement premised on a similar philosophical project—namely, using Kantian resources to ground an essentially historical mode of philosophizing. The chapter argues that Heidegger and Adorno see in Kant the beginnings of a historical metaphysics, which they develop in divergent ways. 

I am currently in the process of translating two chapters from Adorno, Heidegger, and the Crisis of German Idealism into standalone journal articles. I am re-writing significant parts of Chapter 1 for International Philosophical Quarterly (Fall 2024) as “Kant’s Critique of Rationalist Metaphysics: between Hume and Jacobi.” And for Critical horizons: journal of social & critical theory (Spring 2025) I am writing an article titled “Adorno’s Rationalist Optimism,” in which I challenge the common Habermas-inspired claim in Adorno scholarship that he is a pessimist about rationality who locates critical emancipatory potential primarily within the aesthetic domain. I do so primarily by retrieving Adorno’s championing of Kantian epistemological principles for his own critical theory, which he uses as a benchmark to undercut inadequate intellectual positions. 

In the next few years, I will prepare a monograph proposal based on my dissertation for Northwestern University Press, which I plan to title Adorno and Phenomenology. I will refine chapter 3 of my dissertation, as a standalone article titled “The Kantian Root of Heidegger’s Fundamental Ontology” for the British journal for the history of philosophy. I further plan to seek publication in Journal of the history of philosophy for an article I have written on F.W.J. Schelling’s critical negotiation of Kant’s concept of transcendental freedom. While seeking a home for these projects, I will also keep working on my translating of Adorno’s lecture course Fragen der Dialektik from 1963-4 for Polity Press (as Questions of the Dialectic), and write a critical introduction. 

My long-term research plans involve developing a research program that bridges intellectual history and philosophy in examining the philosophical underpinnings of Weimar political culture. This research will culminate in two projected books. First, I seek to trace the genesis of early Twentieth-Century German Conservatism to debates in the German Enlightenment in a project tentatively titled as The New Conservatism and the Crisis of Reason. The second book, projected as Philosophy of the Future: Philosophical Materialism in Bloch, Lukács, and Adorno, offers a new interpretation of Adorno as inheriting a distinctly philosophical materialist project that he inherits from Bloch and Lukács, has its roots in Feuerbach’s materialism. I also plan to publish yearly in journals dedicated to phenomenology and critical theory. After publishing my first book, I will revise a draft on Husserl’s critique of scientific culture as a self-conscious return to the tight connection between philosophical critique and human freedom found in the tradition of German Idealism. This yearly effort will be my attempt to keep pace with contemporary trends and work in these areas while contributing to the history of Post-Kantian German philosophy more broadly.