I work on issues in medieval psychology, metaphysics, and methodology. One of the central debates of my research concerns whether the soul’s powers are active or passive with respect to even their most basic cognitive acts. E.g., when I see the orange cat, am I mere passive recipient of this sensation or do I perform some sort of active role to single out this object? This question is deceptively simple but raises a whole host of further questions, e.g., concerning what it even means to be an “active power” and how one might generally conduct a “science” of the soul, be it through more general metaphysical considerations or more specific empirical arguments. 

In 2022, I completed my PhD in philosophy at McGill University, Montréal, where I wrote a dissertation on this topic, focused on broadly “Augustinian” Franciscans, such as Peter John Olivi, Gonsalvus of Spain, and John Duns Scotus, along with the peculiar Dominican, Durand of St. Pourçain. Although these philosophers disagree on certain details, they commonly agree that even our most basic acts of cognition primarily originate from within our cognitive powers, as the most relevant active principles, rather than from external objects or intermediary representations. From 2023 to 2024, I continued to work on this topic at Charles University, Prague, as a post-doctoral fellow, where I expanded the scope of my research to include a wider range of medieval thinkers, especially those engaged with the authority of Averroes in this debate.

At Humboldt University, I will further revise and build on my prior research. In particular, I aim to finish revising a monograph on this topic, from Olivi to Durand, and to begin venturing into further research on the long legacy of these medieval figures. I’m especially interested in how Durand and his Franciscan contemporary, Peter Auriol, get adopted in the late scholastic and early modern periods, insofar as they get grouped together with so-called “Nominalists” and “Averroists” in this very debate.