Chong Un Choe-Smith
Areas of specialization: Normative and Applied Ethics, Bioethics, Political Philosophy, and Philosophy of Law
Areas of competence: Philosophy of Religion, Environmental Ethics
Dissertation: International Political Legitimacy and Procedural Justice
I practiced law for several years before turning my efforts entirely to philosophy. I formerly served as Senior Appellate Court Attorney with the California Court of Appeal and currently maintain my license to practice law in California and Massachusetts.
I am currently a doctoral candidate in philosophy with areas of specialization in the philosophy of law, political philosophy, and ethics, particularly normative and applied ethics. My primary subject of research is international legitimacy and procedural justice, focusing on the legitimacy of non-state actors with economic charters. My other research interests include animal research ethics, global justice and human rights, women’s rights, animal rights, climate change and environmental ethics, normative theories, and practical reasoning.
My prior teaching experience includes teaching at a community college, a state university and private universities, including Bentley University, in Waltham, Massachusetts, where I am currently teaching. I previously served as a visiting instructor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell during the 2013-2014 academic year. I also previously served as a faculty fellow in environmental justice in 2012 with the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. I have taught introduction to philosophy, introduction to ethics, bioethics, rights, and the ethics of international law.
Kyle Fruh
Areas of Specialization: Ethics, Applied Ethics (especially Bioethics and Environmental Ethics)
Areas of Concentration: Metaethics, Political Philosophy
Dissertation: Sacrifices: The Paradigmatic, the Demanding, and the Heroic
I defended my dissertation, advised by Judy Lichtenberg, in the Spring of 2014. There I take up a number of tasks centered on the concept of sacrifice. I develop a novel account of what it is to make a sacrifice, focused on a set of objective and subjective conditions an agent meets in paradigmatic cases. I then argue that some such account is indispensable for articulating and responding to the problem of overly demanding duties in moral theory. Finally, I address cases of morally heroic sacrifices, often accompanied by the claim (made by the heroic agent) that the sacrifices were in some sense required. I argue against a deflationary explanation of this phenomenon, and also against a moralizing explanation. I suggest that a more promising account of the sense of requirement in question has its roots in heroic character, which manifests in practical necessity.
My interests extend to the more general question of how we become bound to act in certain ways and what it is that binds us. One avenue of research this has led me down concerns the nature of promises, where I have argued that a variety of non-standard promises (single-party promises, oaths, vows) should be taken seriously and are difficult to give a reasonable account of on some influential views of promising.
I am currently a visiting professor at Beloit College, WI, where I am enjoying, among other things, an incredibly dedicated and supportive environment for experimentation in teaching, an institutional directive to emphasize the liberal arts in practice, and cheese curds.
Trip Glazer 
Areas of Specialization: Philosophy of Mind (especially Emotion), Philosophy of Psychology, Philosophy of Language
Areas of Concentration: Moral Psychology, Bioethics, Metaethics, 19th-20th Century German Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy
Dissertation: The Language of Emotion
My research focuses on a number of issues relating to the nonverbal expression of emotion. My dissertation, advised by Rebecca Kukla and scheduled for a January 2016 defense, develops a novel theory of what emotional expressions are and of how they function. I argue that emotional expressions are best conceived as those behaviors that make emotions perceptually manifest. Thus, a smile is an expression of joy because an observer who sees a smile can literally see joy. After defending this analysis against challenges, I argue that it puts into relief the complex relationship between language and expression, which are two independent yet complementary modes of communication: language conveys information by encoding it in symbols, while expressions convey information by making it perceptually manifest. That being said, emotional expressions, like speech acts, can do a great many things. A smile can be used to inform another that one is happy, but also to build trust, to relieve tension, or even just to be polite. Emotional expressions are richly textured communicative acts, and not merely the emotional “read-outs” that they are often taken to be.
Beyond the expression of emotion, I am interested in the evolution of emotion, the importance of emotion for moral agency, speech act theory, and the nature of hate speech. I also maintain a research program in the history of philosophy, especially in 19th-20th century German philosophy. My master’s thesis, written under the direction of Sebastian Rand at Georgia State University, explored the role of habit in Hegel’s theory of ethical life.
I have taught Introduction to Philosophy, Bioethics, Logic, Critical Thinking, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Emotion, Moral Psychology, and Plato. I am also prepared to teach Introduction to Ethics, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science, and courses in 19th-20th century Continental Philosophy, among other classes.
Anne Jeffrey
Areas of Specialization: Ethics, Metaethics
Areas of Concentration: Ancient Philosophy (especially Aristotle), Applied Ethics, Political Philosophy
Dissertation: On the Moral Significance of Conscience
Anne Jeffrey is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Notre Dame as part of the Hope and Optimism project. She is working on the moral dimensions of hope, hope as a virtue, and its relationship to the virtue of faith. She received her PhD in philosophy from Georgetown University in May of 2015. Her dissertation defends a mind-dependent view of moral reasons which takes inspiration from Aristotle and Aquinas. Anne has taught and served as a teaching assistant for courses in ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of law, bioethics, and ancient philosophy. Her primary research is in metaethics and normative ethics, especially virtue ethics. Other of her current research interests lie in the history of ethics (especially Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, and Anscombe), political and legal philosophy, bioethics, and philosophy of religion.
Oren Magid
Areas of Specialization: 20th Century European Philosophy (esp. Heidegger), Existentialism
Areas of Concentration: Ancient Philosophy (esp. Plato and Aristotle), Ethics
Dissertation: Heidegger’s Investigation of Death: Human Finitude and the Final End
I am currently nearing the completion of my dissertation, written under the advisement of William Blattner. In it, I put forward a novel interpretation of what Heidegger means by ‘death.’ I show that in situating Heidegger’s use of ‘death’ with respect to what interpreters identify as its ordinary meaning – the life-ending event known colloquially as ‘passing away’ –interpreters have failed to distinguish between two ordinary senses of ‘death.’ ‘Death’ does not only ordinarily refer to passing away, but also to the non-existence that follows this. I argue that the latter, properly understood, is what Heidegger means by ‘death.’ I show that such a view maintains the intuitiveness of views that read his use of ‘death’ in the ordinary sense, without falling prey to the misunderstandings that motivate those views that read his use of ‘death’ in a non-ordinary sense.
My dissertation’s focus on death is a symptom of my broader interest in human finitude. Human finitude is usually understood in one of two ways: (1) as our mortality – that, in the end, we are certain to die; or (2) as the fallibility, fragility, or vulnerability of our cognitive abilities. My work develops a novel interpretation of human finitude: we are finite insofar as the intelligibility of our existence is ultimately grounded in its end or limit – death. I have designed and taught courses on Aristotle’s ethics, the distinction between rhetoric and dialogue in Plato, and Existentialism, among others. I am currently excited to be designing a course, which I will teach this spring, focused on death.
Tony Manela
Areas of Specialization: Normative Ethics, Moral Psychology
Areas of Competence: Applied Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Law, Ancient Philosophy
Dissertation: Obligations of Gratitude and Correlative Rights
My research focuses on gratitude, moral obligations, and moral rights. My dissertation, written under the mentorship of Dr. Margaret Little, begins with a puzzle about these three concepts: most obligations we owe to others (like promissory obligations) correlate to rights those others hold against us. Yet despite the fact that we can owe obligations of gratitude to benefactors, it seems benefactors do not have a right to their beneficiaries’ gratitude. I resolve this puzzle by arguing that despite appearances, benefactors do indeed have a certain morally important kind of right to gratitude—what I call an imperfect right.
In the future, I intend to take up further questions of gratitude (e.g., how it is distinct from appreciation; how it contributes to wellbeing), as well as imperfect rights more generally. Moral psychology aside, my philosophical interests also include military ethics and just war theory, and Hellenistic philosophy (especially Cynicism and Epicureanism).
I have taught introductory-level courses on logic and ethics, and more advanced courses on political philosophy, just war theory, Hellenistic philosophy, and gratitude.
Torsten Menge
Areas of Specialization: Social and Political Philosophy, Social Ontology
Areas of Competence: 20th Century European Philosophy, Analytic Pragmatism, Metaethics, Social Epistemology
Dissertation: The Power of Genealogy
My work is primarily in social and political philosophy, in particular on issues of social ontology. My current research project is concerned with the social ontology of power and the pragmatic role of power attributions.
My dissertation, written under the direction of Rebecca Kukla, is a study of the social ontology of power and the role that the concept plays in genealogical accounts of reason-giving practices. Starting from the common assumption that power is a counterfactually robust social capacity of agents, I show that a number of common strategies to account for such a capacity fail. Drawing on a strategy that has been used in the philosophical debate about truth, I argue that power attributions are a form of pretense: When we attribute power to agents, we treat them as if they had social capacities, even if we are not strictly speaking entitled to do so. The resulting fiction of power is not simply an illusion or a false representation of social reality, but is built into the structure of our material practices. Using this view of power, I argue that pragmatist accounts of reason-giving practices need and have room for an expressive concept of power. I argue that genealogies that use the concept of power (such as those by Michel Foucault) should not be understood as debunking explanations of our present normative practices, but as expressive accounts of how reasons, norms, and concepts have come to be authoritative for us.
I also work on issues in metaethics, on questions about social agency and responsibility, and on the concept of ideology. In future work, I plan to reconnect issues of social ontology with discussions in normative social and political philosophy, e.g. by considering what conceptions of power are at play in normative political reasoning.
I have taught courses in ethics, metaethics, political philosophy and logic. This summer, I designed and taught an online class on social and political justice. I’m currently teaching a class on relationships, which is concerned with the nature of a variety of personal relationships, the internal norms that govern those relationships, and their social and political context.