ABOUT

Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Philosophy
Georgetown University
Faculty Affiliate, Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law

Keynote Speaker

I am an ethicist, with a focus on ancient Greek (and Roman) philosophy.  In recent years, I have turned to Stoic ethics. Stoic Wisdom: Ancient Lessons for Modern Resilience takes a fresh look at the Stoics and their strategies for finding calm. Feed the Soul: Lessons fronn Aristotle on Living Well is my newest book, out January 2027. In this new book I return to my greatest philosophical love, Aristotle. He is the philosophical titan of all time, polymath, and known in medieval times as The Philospher and The Teacher. I walk beside him in this new book, as he explores nature, the Olympics and athletics, friendship, attachment and loss, and, in general, what it means to live a good life. Unlike the Stoics, Aristotle acknowledges our vulnerability and our dependence on others for flourishing.

I have worked with the military for over three decades in connection with Stoic ethics, posttraumatic stress, and moral injury. But my interest in the military really goes back to my childhood. My dad was a WW II vet who never talked about “his” war, though he carried his dog tags on his keychain for 65 years. His war wasn’t something he could share. It was a private burden. I came to think that I needed to share that burden, or at least, understand his military service better.

The chance came when I was appointed the inaugural Distinguished Chair in Ethics at the U.S. Naval Academy in the mid-nineties.  Spurred by both my time at the Academy and Georgetown students returning from conflict, I wrote what came to be a trilogy about the moral challenges of going to war and returning home:  Stoic Warriors, The Untold War (a New York Times notable book), and  Afterwar. Stoic Wisdom takes up the broader (ancient) lessons of cultivating character and resilience. With Aristotle as my guide, Feed the Soul puts our sociality at the center of living well and makes the argument that practical wisdom requires cultivated emotions and the sensitivity to our surroundings that this entails.

I have research training in psychotherapy and a longstanding interest in the emotions— a prominent theme in my early work on Aristotle and Kant. In some recent work, I have focused on how we express ourselves through emotions, including in dance and cadenced march.  “Dancers and Soldiers Sharing the dancefloor” is a piece I developed as a fellow at the NYU Center for Ballet and the Arts in 2017. A companion piece, “Trenches, Cadences, and Faces,” focuses on social connection and cohesion built through the cadences of march, especially in the Great War.

I have received many honors for my work, including election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. In addition, I have held fellowships from the American Philosophical Society (the oldest learned society, founded by Benjamin Franklin), the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Mellon Foundation, the Wilson Center, and the Charlotte Newcombe Foundation. At Harvard, I received recognition for my doctoral dissertation as the outstanding thesis in the area of history of philosophy.

I am a Distinguished University Professor and a Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown. I taught at Yale earlier in my career. I love the classroom and regularly teach at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Given the chance, I head outdoors and walk, hike, and on occasion bike. But swimming is my real passion, and I swim year-round (the pool is heated in the winter).  Our grown children have taught us about athletics and the great outdoors:  Kala was a competitive swimmer at Dartmouth and now swims in the open water in the Bay area; Jonathan cycled across the country for Habitat for Humanity with a Yale group and also led cycling tours in Europe. We’ve always hiked as a family. Since my days at Bryn Mawr, I’ve been a modern dancer and during the pandemic, have sorely missed my dance classes. And then there is gardening. Come summer, I’m snipping and weeding in our flower borders, lost in the glorious mud.

Cooking is a serious family business. My husband Marshall, aka “chef Marcel,” is a remarkably good cook and a dedicated pickler.

Our beautiful grandchildren Max and Sophie (c/o Jonathan and Elaine) and Dylan and Amelia (c/o Kala and Austin) keep alive our imaginations and our passion for play!