about

Hi! I'm Nate. Here's a button that will produce my CV, if you're into that sort of thing (updated March 2024).

I am an Assistant Professor in the Corcoran Department of Philosophy at the University of Virginia.

I work primarily in social and political philosophy and philosophy of law, focusing on the legitimacy of institutions and the nature of the practical authority that they claim over us. I have published papers in these and other areas in venues such as Philosophy & Public Affairs, The Journal of Political Philosophy, and Australasian Journal of Philosophy. On this site you will find more detail about me, my research, my teaching, and how to contact me.

Immediately previously to UVA, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Philosophy Department of McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. Previously to that, I was a Research Fellow with the Justitia Amplificata Centre for Advanced Studies, an interdisciplinary research center in political theory and philosophy at Goethe Universität Frankfurt in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. I was also a visiting postdoctoral research fellow with the Chair of International Political Theory at Goethe Universität for Sommersemester 2014 and during the 2014-15 academic year I was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech. I have a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Washington University in St. Louis (2014), an M.A. in Philosophy from Virginia Tech (2008), and a B.A. in Biochemistry from Spring Arbor University (2004). I've ended up a long way from biochemistry! Everything else you'll find here is about philosophy but if you're interested: for my senior thesis, I investigated the reported efficacy of chaulmoogra oil for treating leprosy by separating out various chemical components of the natural oil and testing their properties. 

I'm originally from the USA, though not from any particular place. I was born in the northeast and have lived in New York City, the south, the midwest, China, Germany, and Canada. I've learned a lot from my migratory ways. We can't take the view from everywhere or the view from nowhere, but I hope that having had the view from many-wheres helps my understanding of norms, institutions, and values. It’s nice to be back in time zones where I can occasionally watch some baseball. Sometimes I attempt to write fiction as an outlet for the kind of explosive purple prose that is most often counterproductive in a philosophy article aiming for clarity and precision. 

My research is focused on issues of political authority and legitimacy. I am curious about how political institutions concentrate and exercise power and what that means for those of us subject to those institutions (i.e. all of us). My main research program right now focuses on legitimacy, especially the fundamental questions of how legitimacy is a distinct kind of normative assessment, how legitimacy practices function, and therefore how to theorize legitimacy across a range of subjects, including but extending beyond the state’s political legitimacy. As you can see more about in my papers, I also have side projects in the nature of authority as a source of reasons, the negotiation of norms in conversation, and adjudicative procedures.