Research

I work primarily in moral psychology, in both the analytic and Continental traditions, and on contemporary and historical figures.  Some themes I write about include: self-knowledge and self-opacity, acknowledgment, the emotions, the imagination, and humanistic methodology.  In terms of figures, I work primarily on Immanuel Kant and Sigmund Freud, but also Stanley Cavell, James Baldwin, Iris Murdoch, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Bernard Williams.  I also work in philosophical aesthetics, and I write about film. 

I am currently writing a book tentatively entitled Opacity and Experience, under contract with Harvard University Press.

I. Journal Articles
§ peer reviewed

  1. § “Authority and Ambivalence: Kant, Freud, and Moral Psychology.” Mind, forthcoming. link
  2. § “Shame and Philosophy” Raritan Quarterly. Winter 2025. link
  3. § “Obscure Representations from a Pragmatic Point of View.” European Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming. link
  4. § “Moral Psychology as Soul-Picture.” The Philosophical Quarterly. forthcoming. link
  5. § “Kant’s Fantasy.” Mind.  Vol. 133, No. 531. pp. 714-741. (2024). link
  6. “Opacity.” “The New Basics: Person.” The Philosopher. September 2022. link
  7. “Picturing the Mind: Freud on Metapsychology and Methodology.” Die Seele abbilden. Über Freuds Methodologie und Metapsychologie. WestEnd: Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung.2022
    Russell Picturing the Mind WestEnd (German) link
    Russell Picturing the Mind English
  8. “How Shall We Put Ourselves in Touch with Reality?” On Baldwin, Film, and Acknowledgment. Social Research (2021) Special Issue on Apology. 87:4. link
  9. § “Kantian Self-Conceit and the Two Guises of Authority.”
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy. (2020) 50:2. link
  10. § “Unity and Synthesis in the Ego Ideal: Reading Freud’s Concept Through Kant’s Philosophy.” American Imago (2012), 69: 3. link

II. Articles in Edited Collections

  1. “Kant and the Opacity of Human Action.” Kant’s Fundamental Assumptions. Eds. Colin Marshall and Colin McLear. Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
  2. “Recognition in Theory: Psychoanalysis and the Epistemology of Recognition” in The Philosophy of Recognition: Expanded Perspectives on a Fundamental Concept. Eds. Matthew Congdon and Thomas Khurana. Routledge. forthcoming.
  3. “I Want to Know More About You: Knowing and Acknowledging in Cavell and Chinatown.” Cavell and Aesthetic Understanding. Ed. Garry Hagberg. Palgrave Macmillan. 2018. link

III. Book Reviews

  1. Tamar Schapiro’s Feeling Like It: A Theory of Inclination and Will. Oxford University Press, 2021. Philosophical Review. 131 (4): 519-523. 2022.
  2. Robert Pippin’s Douglas Sirk: Philosophical Filmmaker. Bloomsbury, 2021. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (2022).
  3. Richard Eldridge’s Werner Herzog: Philosophical Filmmaker. Bloomsbury, 2020. Existenz. Volume 15, Number 1. Spring 2020.
  4. Laura Papish’s Kant on Evil, Self-Deception, and Moral Reform.  Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 58, Number 2, April 2020.
  5. Melissa Merritt’s Kant on Reflection and Virtue. Society for German Idealism and Romanticism Review. Vol 2., Issue 1. 2019 (60-71).

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