RESEARCH
PUBLICATIONS
Peer-reviewed journal articles
"‘An Ethiopian Lucretius’: Giusto da Urbino and the Origins of the Ḥatäta Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob Controversy" (co-authored with Jonathan Egid). Forthcoming in the Journal of the History of Ideas.
"Laozi Through the Lens of the White Rose: Resonance or Dissonance?". Oxford German Studies 52, no. 1 (2023), 62-79. DOI: 10.1080/00787191.2023.2171017. (Open Access)
"Thales - the 'first philosopher'? A troubled chapter in the historiography of philosophy". British Journal for the History of Philosophy 30, no. 5 (2022), 727-750, DOI: 10.1080/09608788.2022.2029347. (Open Access; recipient of the BJHP Beaney Prize for the best contribution to widening the canon)
“Zhuangzi on ‘happy fish’ and the limits of human knowledge”. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 28, no. 2 (2020), 216-230, DOI: 10.1080/09608788.2019.1667294. (Open Access)
Book Chapters
"Bad Rulers in Sextus Empiricus and Zhuāngzǐ—and What to Do About Them". Forthcoming in the volume Patterns of Evil in Ancient Chinese and Greek Philosophy, edited by R. A. H. King & Pavlos Kontos. Routledge, 2026.
“Parmenides and the Centred View”. Forthcoming (Open Access) in the volume Parmenides: New Perspectives, edited by Alex Long & Barbara Sattler. Oxford University Press, 2025.
Books
(as editor) In Search of Zär’a Ya‛ǝqob: On the History, Philosophy, and Authorship of the Ḥatäta Zär’a Ya‛ǝqob and the Ḥatäta Wäldä Ḥəywät
De Gruyter: New Studies in the History and Historiography of Philosophy Series, 2024. Co-edited with Jonathan Egid and Fasil Merawi.
De Gruyter: New Studies in the History and Historiography of Philosophy Series, 2024. Co-edited with Jonathan Egid and Fasil Merawi.
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The Ḥatäta Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob and the Ḥatäta Wäldä Ḥəywät are enigmatic and controversial works. An autobiography and a collection of didactic exhortations respectively, they are composed in the Gǝʿǝz language and set in the highlands of Ethiopia during the early seventeenth century. Expressed in prose of great power and beauty, they bear witness to pivotal events in Ethiopian history and develop a philosophical system of considerable depth. They have been called the “jewel of Ethiopian literature”, and have served to demonstrate, in the words of Claude Sumner, that “modern philosophy, in the sense of a personal rationalistic critical investigation, began in Ethiopia with Zera Yacob at the same time as in England and in France”. However they have also been condemned as a forgery, an elaborate mystification successful in deceiving generations of European and Ethiopian scholars.
This volume is an attempt to set the study of these fascinating texts on new ground. As the works begin to attract new readers, it is more important than ever to present a clear account of the most up-to-date scholarship on these texts and the ways they are being investigated by contemporary philosophers, philologists, and historians. Most of the attention devoted to the Ḥatäta Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob and the Ḥatäta Wäldä Ḥəywät over the past century has been on the question of their authorship, of whether they were composed, as is claimed in the texts, by a seventeenth-century Ethiopian scholar from Aksum and his disciple, respectively; or whether they were in fact composed over two centuries later by the Capuchin missionary Giusto da Urbino. Considering that key scholarship pertaining to the debate was published during the invasion of Ethiopia by Fascist Italy, during the 1974 revolution that overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie, but also, more recently, amid attempts to decolonize and diversify philosophy of our present day, the political stakes of the authorship dispute cannot be underestimated. Serious engagement with the various contexts in which the debate has arisen is thus required to put the study of these texts on a stable footing. While the authorship question is addressed in many of the volume’s contributions, it is not the sole locus of discussion. The near-exclusive focus on this question over the last one hundred years has obscured scholarly interest in the philosophical and literary qualities of the texts. This volume attempts to begin filling this gap, exploring the texts' potentially significant implications not only for the history of philosophy in a global purview but also for Gǝʿǝz literature and transnational intellectual history of the seventeenth century. |
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The volume builds on groundbreaking scholarship on the two Ḥatätas, which has come out of an international conference (organized under the auspices of Philiminality Oxford) that took place in Oxford in Spring 2022.
Book Reviews
Review of Neglected Classics of Philosophy, Volume 2, edited by Eric Schliesser. MIND (2024). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzae005. (Available to read here)
DOCTORAL THESIS
Thesis title: "Ancient Philosophy within a Global Purview: Parmenides and Zhuangzi on Expressing What Can (and Cannot) Be Known"
Doctoral supervisors: Prof. Luca Castagnoli (Philosophy, Oxford), Prof. Dirk Meyer (Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Oxford), and Dr Shaul Tor (Classics/Philosophy, KCL)
Doctoral examiners: Prof. Ursula Coope (Philosophy, Oxford; internal) and Prof. David Wong (Philosophy, Duke; external)
My doctoral thesis argues that widespread misconceptions about the early history of philosophy hamper engagement with ancient philosophy within a global purview. I identify and challenge an influential narrative according to which philosophy emerges through a shift from mythos to logos (Chapter 1). This framework misrepresents the history of ancient Greek philosophy and simultaneously underpins the perceived illegitimacy of ‘non-Western’ traditions as philosophical traditions. I examine how this same narrative creates major interpretive blind spots within specialist work on ancient philosophy (Chapters 2–5). I do so by exploring two consequential cases, two foundational philosophers in early Greek and classical Chinese philosophy, respectively: Parmenides and Zhuangzi.
I show how problematic assumptions inherited from mainstream macro-narratives prime us to see Parmenides as exhibiting thoroughly optimistic attitudes toward human knowledge, and Zhuangzi as either an anti-rational mystic who dismisses language or as a negative dogmatist who rejects objective knowledge (Chapter 2). I demonstrate that adopting a dialogical approach to specific questions in epistemology as they arise in Parmenides and Zhuangzi helps substantiate alternative interpretive routes which have been obscured by received historiographical frameworks. I bring Zhuangzi and Parmenides in dialogue on the issue of the limits of human cognition (Chapter 3); on the potential of analogies and indirect argumentation to push the boundaries of what can be known (Chapter 4); and finally, on whether numerical monism is defensible (Chapter 5).
From these inquiries, Parmenides emerges as someone quite other than the unmitigated epistemological optimist he is usually assumed to be, which raises fruitful questions about the status of his constructive claims. Conversely, Zhuangzi is not the anti-rationalist or negative dogmatist he is widely taken to be; instead, his own circumspect stance on the question of what can (and cannot) be known leads him to forgo all unqualified claims to knowledge.
Doctoral supervisors: Prof. Luca Castagnoli (Philosophy, Oxford), Prof. Dirk Meyer (Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Oxford), and Dr Shaul Tor (Classics/Philosophy, KCL)
Doctoral examiners: Prof. Ursula Coope (Philosophy, Oxford; internal) and Prof. David Wong (Philosophy, Duke; external)
My doctoral thesis argues that widespread misconceptions about the early history of philosophy hamper engagement with ancient philosophy within a global purview. I identify and challenge an influential narrative according to which philosophy emerges through a shift from mythos to logos (Chapter 1). This framework misrepresents the history of ancient Greek philosophy and simultaneously underpins the perceived illegitimacy of ‘non-Western’ traditions as philosophical traditions. I examine how this same narrative creates major interpretive blind spots within specialist work on ancient philosophy (Chapters 2–5). I do so by exploring two consequential cases, two foundational philosophers in early Greek and classical Chinese philosophy, respectively: Parmenides and Zhuangzi.
I show how problematic assumptions inherited from mainstream macro-narratives prime us to see Parmenides as exhibiting thoroughly optimistic attitudes toward human knowledge, and Zhuangzi as either an anti-rational mystic who dismisses language or as a negative dogmatist who rejects objective knowledge (Chapter 2). I demonstrate that adopting a dialogical approach to specific questions in epistemology as they arise in Parmenides and Zhuangzi helps substantiate alternative interpretive routes which have been obscured by received historiographical frameworks. I bring Zhuangzi and Parmenides in dialogue on the issue of the limits of human cognition (Chapter 3); on the potential of analogies and indirect argumentation to push the boundaries of what can be known (Chapter 4); and finally, on whether numerical monism is defensible (Chapter 5).
From these inquiries, Parmenides emerges as someone quite other than the unmitigated epistemological optimist he is usually assumed to be, which raises fruitful questions about the status of his constructive claims. Conversely, Zhuangzi is not the anti-rationalist or negative dogmatist he is widely taken to be; instead, his own circumspect stance on the question of what can (and cannot) be known leads him to forgo all unqualified claims to knowledge.
PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY
I recently co-authored an article for the centenary issue of The Philosopher with Josh Platzky Miller, summarizing some of our work challenging the very idea of 'Western Philosophy' and its relevance to the future of the history of philosophy: “The Future of the History of Philosophy?”. The Philosopher 111, no. 1 (2023), 28–33.
Last year I co-wrote an article with Justin Holder about 'Crossing Philosophical Borders' through Philiminality - a student-run platform for cross-cultural and interdisciplinary philosophy that I run at Oxford - for the Oxford Philosophy Faculty magazine (2022 issue).
Last year I co-wrote an article with Justin Holder about 'Crossing Philosophical Borders' through Philiminality - a student-run platform for cross-cultural and interdisciplinary philosophy that I run at Oxford - for the Oxford Philosophy Faculty magazine (2022 issue).
WORK IN PROGRESS
Article-length papers & volume chapters
(article-length paper) A paper on metaphysical themes in the Zhuangzi
(article-length paper) "Aristotle’s ambiguous attitudes toward ‘Asians'"
(journal article; co-authored with Josh Platzky Miller) "Eurocentrism and its Critics in the History of Philosophy". Introduction to a BJHP special issue, co-edited with Josh Platzky Miller.
(chapter for an edited volume; co-authored with Josh Platzky Miller) "Questioning 'Western Philosophy': An Introduction"
(chapter for an edited volume) "From mythos to logos? The spurious origin story of ‘Western Philosophy’"
(chapter for an edited volume) "Comparative and Global Approaches to the Presocratics"
Books
The Routledge Handbook of Presocratic Philosophy
Under contract, co-edited with Jenny Bryan and Shaul Tor.
Under contract, co-edited with Jenny Bryan and Shaul Tor.
Zär’a Ya‛ǝqob and the Authorship Dispute: A Sourcebook
Forthcoming with Oxford University Press (British Society for the History of Philosophy: New Texts in the History of Philosophy). Co-edited with Jonathan Egid.
With English translations of Amharic, French, Italian, German, Latin, and Russian sources.
Forthcoming with Oxford University Press (British Society for the History of Philosophy: New Texts in the History of Philosophy). Co-edited with Jonathan Egid.
With English translations of Amharic, French, Italian, German, Latin, and Russian sources.
'Western Philosophy': A Critique
Under contract with Cambridge University Press, co-authored with Josh Platzky Miller.
Across the humanities and social sciences, the idea of ‘The West’, or of ‘Western Science’ or ‘Western Civilization’, has been challenged for several decades. While most famously outlined by Stuart Hall (1992), key points of critique have been raised by a variety of other authors (Rashed 1994; Bonnet 2004; Hobson 2004; Appiah 2016, 2019; Mac Sweeney 2023). And yet, despite these contributions, there has been no systematic critique to date of the idea of a ‘Western Philosophy’. This is a strange state of affairs. Philosophy to a significant degree underpins much of the debate about other aspects of the ‘West’, especially in relation to concerns about ‘Western ideas’ and ‘Western values’. Even in literature critical of the prevailing canon of 'Western Philosophy', the idea that ‘Western Philosophy’ tracks a continuous, centuries-old tradition tracing back to the ancient Greeks remains largely unquestioned.
This book thus draws critiques of ‘The West’ into philosophy, by challenging the very idea of a ‘Western Philosophy’. In developing this critique, we question presuppositions that have been widespread and remain unexamined in the extant philosophical literature, while also demonstrating the significance of such a critique for diversifying the broader humanities and social sciences. The book probes the legitimacy of the descriptor ‘Western’ when applied to philosophy (especially where the latter is considered a universal practice of human reason); the historical circumstances in which the idea of a ‘Western Philosophy’ emerged; and the ways in which disciplinary history of philosophy often presents ‘Western Philosophy’ as equivalent to philosophy as such, implying the exclusion and erasure of non-European philosophical traditions from the mainstream canon of philosophy. In general, most histories of philosophy continue to be written as if philosophy begins in ancient Greece, usually starting with Thales; as if it is a largely self-standing European achievement with minimal influence from elsewhere; and as if it tracks an uninterrupted tradition down to the present day (known as the “Plato to NATO” picture in popular parlance). However, although these three suppositions are commonly invoked to support the idea of a ‘Western Philosophy’, none withstands scrutiny.
We aim for the book to lay the groundwork for new visions of a global, decolonial, entwined, connected history of philosophy: one which neither makes ‘Western Philosophy’ the singular measure for philosophy globally, nor uses the idea of ‘Western Philosophy’ to seal off parts of Europe from exchange with the rest of the world, either retrospectively or for generations to come.
An international conference related to this project (organized with Josh Platzky Miller in collaboration with Philiminality Oxford) took place in April 2023. Select proceedings of this conference will appear in an edited volume.
Josh Platzky Miller and I recently co-authored an article for the centenary issue of The Philosopher, summarizing some of our ongoing work challenging the very idea of 'Western Philosophy'.
Under contract with Cambridge University Press, co-authored with Josh Platzky Miller.
Across the humanities and social sciences, the idea of ‘The West’, or of ‘Western Science’ or ‘Western Civilization’, has been challenged for several decades. While most famously outlined by Stuart Hall (1992), key points of critique have been raised by a variety of other authors (Rashed 1994; Bonnet 2004; Hobson 2004; Appiah 2016, 2019; Mac Sweeney 2023). And yet, despite these contributions, there has been no systematic critique to date of the idea of a ‘Western Philosophy’. This is a strange state of affairs. Philosophy to a significant degree underpins much of the debate about other aspects of the ‘West’, especially in relation to concerns about ‘Western ideas’ and ‘Western values’. Even in literature critical of the prevailing canon of 'Western Philosophy', the idea that ‘Western Philosophy’ tracks a continuous, centuries-old tradition tracing back to the ancient Greeks remains largely unquestioned.
This book thus draws critiques of ‘The West’ into philosophy, by challenging the very idea of a ‘Western Philosophy’. In developing this critique, we question presuppositions that have been widespread and remain unexamined in the extant philosophical literature, while also demonstrating the significance of such a critique for diversifying the broader humanities and social sciences. The book probes the legitimacy of the descriptor ‘Western’ when applied to philosophy (especially where the latter is considered a universal practice of human reason); the historical circumstances in which the idea of a ‘Western Philosophy’ emerged; and the ways in which disciplinary history of philosophy often presents ‘Western Philosophy’ as equivalent to philosophy as such, implying the exclusion and erasure of non-European philosophical traditions from the mainstream canon of philosophy. In general, most histories of philosophy continue to be written as if philosophy begins in ancient Greece, usually starting with Thales; as if it is a largely self-standing European achievement with minimal influence from elsewhere; and as if it tracks an uninterrupted tradition down to the present day (known as the “Plato to NATO” picture in popular parlance). However, although these three suppositions are commonly invoked to support the idea of a ‘Western Philosophy’, none withstands scrutiny.
We aim for the book to lay the groundwork for new visions of a global, decolonial, entwined, connected history of philosophy: one which neither makes ‘Western Philosophy’ the singular measure for philosophy globally, nor uses the idea of ‘Western Philosophy’ to seal off parts of Europe from exchange with the rest of the world, either retrospectively or for generations to come.
An international conference related to this project (organized with Josh Platzky Miller in collaboration with Philiminality Oxford) took place in April 2023. Select proceedings of this conference will appear in an edited volume.
Josh Platzky Miller and I recently co-authored an article for the centenary issue of The Philosopher, summarizing some of our ongoing work challenging the very idea of 'Western Philosophy'.