Research

I work primarily on issues in moral psychology, ethics, and aesthetics, in both the analytic and Continental traditions, and on contemporary and historical figures.  My central focus in recent years has been on self-knowledge and self-opacity in the context of moral psychology.  Figures I work on include Immanuel Kant and Sigmund Freud, but also Stanley Cavell, James Baldwin, Iris Murdoch, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Bernard Williams.  I also work on film, and on the significance of aesthetic experience quite generally. 

I am currently writing a book tentatively entitled Opaque Animals: Agency, Ethics, and Experience. I have papers in progress on apology, on fantasy, and on Murdoch’s notion of a “soul-picture.”

I. Journal Articles

1. “Title TBD.” Philosophical Topics. Special issue on the work of Stephen Mulhall. forthcoming.
2. “Opacity.” “The New Basics: Person.” The Philosopher. September 2022.
   Russell Opacity for the New Basics
3. “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)
   Russell Picturing the Mind English
4. “How Shall We Put Ourselves in Touch with Reality?” On Baldwin, Film, and Acknowledgment. Social Research (2021) Special Issue on Apology. 87:4.
   Russell “How Shall We Put Ourselves in Touch with Reality?”
5. “Kantian Self-Conceit and the Two Guises of Authority.”
   Canadian Journal of Philosophy. (2020) 50:2.
   DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/can.2019.15
6. “Unity and Synthesis in the Ego Ideal: Reading Freud’s Concept Through Kant’s Philosophy.” American Imago (2012), 69: 3.
   DOI: 10.1353/aim.2012.0020

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. “I Want to Know More About You: Knowing and Acknowledging in Cavell and Chinatown.” Cavell and Aesthetic Understanding. Ed. Garry Hagberg. Palgrave Macmillan. 2018.
   https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97466-8_1
   Russell I Want to Know More About You
3. “The Space of Pathos: Meaning, Anxiety, and Ethics in Being and Time.” Existential Philosophy and Ethics. Eds. Hans Feger and Manuela Haeckel. De Gruyter, 2013.
   Russell The Space of Pathos

III. 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).