Research
Aesthetics, embodiment, and artistic practice.
My work primarily explores aesthetic and ethical questions surrounding body art, particularly tattooing. My dissertation aims to develop an account of tattooing as a practice situated at the intersection of aesthetics and asceticism.
Current work
Tattooing, aesthetics, and asceticism
Across cultures, ascetic traditions have long employed bodily pain, discipline, and ritual as means to transcendence and knowledge. While modern Western culture often considers itself removed from such traditions, tattooing remains a distinctly modern practice in which pain and aesthetic value are intertwined.
By situating tattooing within the broader history of aesthetic and ascetic practices, I aim to develop a framework for understanding embodiment, pain, and ritual as potentially constitutive of aesthetic meaning rather than merely incidental to it.
Beyond this project, my research interests include the artistic legitimacy of AI-generated art, the conceptual boundaries of fine-art disciplines, collective artistic practices and authorship, and the legacy of Kant and German Idealism in contemporary aesthetics.
Recently finished projects
A Proto-Spinozan Critique of Cartesian Dualism in 17th-Century Dutch Art
This paper explores the intersection of philosophy, religion, and art in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, arguing that a proto-Spinozan critique of Cartesian dualism emerges not only in the philosophical writings of the period but also within artistic transformations accompanying the Protestant Reformation.
Placing Spinoza's metaphysics alongside the evolution of Dutch painting, the paper treats the two developments as parallel products of a shared intellectual and cultural milieu rather than claiming direct causal influence. Where Cartesian dualism separates mind and body, the project asks how Dutch art and Spinoza each reveal a growing emphasis on the immanence of mind, body, nature, and world.
A Feminist Defense of Canonical Revision
This paper offers a feminist defense of canonical revision in art history through the case of Artemisia Gentileschi. It considers both the systemic exclusion that shaped Gentileschi's reception and broader debates about aesthetic value, cultural significance, and the canon.
Drawing on Clifford Geertz, Gianni Vattimo, Steven Feierman, and Karen Halttunen, the paper argues that contextual interpretation can deepen rather than diminish aesthetic judgment. Canon formation is therefore treated not as apolitical recognition of self-evident greatness, but as an interpretive and philosophical practice requiring continued critique.
Virum Post Machina: AI-Generated Art Considered in a Kantian Framework
Could a Kantian conception of art allow AI-generated works to count as art? AI tools appear to lack qualities central to Kant's account—freedom, subjective experience, and purposiveness. This paper argues that the human prompt-imputer can instead serve as the source of these qualities.
By comparing AI-assisted creation with artists who intentionally employ external physical processes, the paper argues that freedom, subjective experience, and purposiveness can remain rooted in the human artist who establishes parameters, initiates the process, and directs it toward an artistic end.
On Reason and Passion: A Reconciliation of Plato and Hume's Philosophies
This project examines the apparent opposition between Plato's suspicion of passions that disrupt rational and moral order and Hume's claim that reason is subordinate to passion. Rather than treating the two as a simple dichotomy, the paper considers how their positions emerge from different philosophical frameworks and how each assigns an important role to both motivation and rational guidance.
Kant's Aesthetics: Tattoos and Fine Art
My master's thesis explains Kant's theories of art and fine art and argues that tattoos can be considered fine art within his aesthetic framework. After establishing how individual tattoos can qualify as works of art, the thesis turns to the larger question of what it means for an entire discipline to be a fine art.
I develop two accounts: the Inherence View, according to which a discipline inherently lends itself to producing fine art, and the Cultural Entrenchment View, according to which a discipline is culturally established around the intention to produce works of fine art. I argue that both are compatible with Kant's aesthetics and support treating tattooing as a fine-art discipline.