I’m revising a monograph, provisionally titled Humanist Certainty, in which I argue that the ancient notion of certainty, alien to the modern concept of the same name, is most fully theorized in Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria as a term denoting customary agreement, not unimpeachable truth. This consensus-based understanding of certainty, built upon earlier sources including Aristotle and Cicero, exerts an influence on Quintilian’s humanist readers—including Lorenzo Valla, Thomas Hobbes, and Giambattista Vico—who use it to ground their writings on law, logic, and science. The second half of the book, which treats these later authors, focuses on the writings on Lorenzo Valla, Thomas Hobbes, and Giambattista Vico.

Building on an essay originally published in Commonweal Magazine, I recently published Learning to Be Fair: Equity from Classical Philosophy to Contemporary Politics (Fortress Press; available at Bookshop.org and Amazon). The monograph draws out the complex history of “equity,” a word that continues to dominate contemporary discussions of ethics and politics. By exposing paradoxes in its ancient theorists like Aristotle and Cicero, I anchor our durable misunderstandings of equity in an inescapable tradition that extends back millennia.

I’m working on a new research project on testimonium in the writings of Augustine, who is often cited as the first theorist in the Latin philosophical tradition to vouch for testimony-based knowledge claims. I’ll be presenting on this research at the Society for Classical Studies Annual Meeting in 2026.

I frequently train with Mill City Running in Minneapolis, no matter the frigid temperatures, and I look forward to running my third Boston Marathon in April. The vibrant running community is one of the many pleasures of living in downtown Minneapolis.

(last updated 12/7/2025)