This page is where you can access my papers on philosophy, rhetoric, and music from my student days. I was an older student, most of these papers are from 2006 and 2007, so these works are pretty representative of my thinking today still.

Vico Looks at the Sophists  This paper applies Giambattista Vico’s notions of poetic truth and philosophical truth to give a fresh interpretation and appreciation for the Ancient Sophists.

Philosophy’s Betrayal of Wagner to Schopenhauer This paper discusses how the philosophy of his time pushed Richard Wagner to the pessimism of Schopenhauer, turning what could have been one of the greatest and most life-affirming composers into one of the greatest yet life denying composers.

Artfulness and I.A. Richards  This paper explores the notion that rather than artfulness being mere ornamentation (or worse, distortion) it is instead an integral part of the nature of concepts themselves.

Developing the Early Sophists  We see the early sophists through the lenses of Aristotle and Plato’s views on rhetoric. Are there other lenses through which to see them? This paper argues that the early sophists’ works could be seen as idealized portraits of dialectical reasoning, fruit for connecting aesthetic principles to moral principles, and odes to the unification/integration of knowledge.

A Defense of Induction  This paper defends induction by showing that both induction and deduction rest upon the same kind of fundamental premises.