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I am a philosopher at the University of Chicago. I defended my dissertation, Existential Pessimism and Aesthetic Experience: Mill, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche on Life’s Value, in the summer of 2021. I currently hold the position of Teaching Fellow in the Department of Philosophy and in the College.

My research centers on questions about the nature and value of human well-being. I pursue these questions primarily by engaging with 19th century thought, though I also maintain an active interest in ancient and contemporary conceptions of well-being more generally.

In my dissertation, I explore the importance to human well-being of particularly aesthetic modes of valuing. I do this by examining how three 19th-century philosophers – Mill, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche – confronted the problem of pessimism: the worry that life might not be worth living. I show how all three took the problem of pessimism to stem from concerns about the structure of human desires and interests, concerns Mill and Nietzsche both took specifically aesthetic modes of valuing to play an essential role in answering.