I work on the history of European philosophy from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, especially in the German context. My main interests are in metaphysics and philosophy of science. My primary research project (funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant) deals with the reception of Descartes in seventeenth- and early-eighteenth century German universities--a phenomenon sometimes called 'Cartesian Scholasticism'. I am tracing the development of theories of causation and substance in the confluence of Cartesian and Aristotelian ideas in the German scholastic tradition from Johann Clauberg (1622-65) to Christian Wolff (1679-1754). Of especial interest to me are various attempts in this tradition to reconcile mechanistic and teleological forms of explanation. The project looks forward to (as well as back from) Kant.
A second research project concerns the philosophy of the human sciences in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany. I am especially interested in Wilhelm Dilthey's (1833-1911) account of historical science--its psychological foundations, its relation to natural scientific explanation, and its critical and empiricist underpinnings. The project aims to situate Dilthey's 'critique of historical reason' in the context of a) the emergence of new empirical sciences of human nature in nineteenth-century Germany, such as anthropology, sociology, and psychology; and b) contemporaneous currents in German philosophy to interpret the new scientific situation, such as positivism, idealism, materialism, and neo-Kantianism.
I also have interests in Islamic philosophy, both classical and modern. In the former, a special concern is the role of ibn Sina and ibn Rushd in shaping subsequent debates on final causation (but also causation in general). In the latter, I'm interested in colonial era reformers--e.g. Jamal-ud-din Afghani, Chiragh Ali, Muhammad Iqbal--and their responses to Enlightenment views of history and progress.
