Philosophical Reflections 📚

Not I, Nor We: The Phenomenological Status of the Representative Agent

This essay explores the ontological status of the representative agent within economic theory. Often treated as a mere modelling convenience, this figure nonetheless enacts decisions, projects futures, and performs optimisations in ways that bear the structural imprint of subjectivity, even if they fall short of its full depth. Drawing upon Husserl’s phenomenology of intentionality, Zahavi’s account of the minimal self, and Schutz’s theory of typification, the analysis reconceives this abstraction as a philosophical presence. The repre- sentative agent is neither a person nor a collective but rather a stylised form of agency whose intelligibility invites reflection on the fragile boundaries that define subjectivity itself.

A Response to “The Problem with Modern Love”

This brief essay offers a philosophical response to “The Problem with Modern Love”, critically examining its portrayal of love. It clarifies the distinct meanings of eros and philia, challenges the conflation of romantic love with friendship, and reveals some of Kierkegaard’s vision of love as an enduring ethical task that transcends fleeting feelings or mutual fulfilment. The essay disputes the call to lower love’s expectations, instead defending love’s idealism as a vital ongoing commitment, one that summons vulnerability, responsibility, and transformation. 

The Intellect’s Compassion: On Contemplation and Fellow-Feeling in Aristotle

This essay reinterprets Aristotle’s contemplative ideal as a form of intellectual compassion. Drawing on the Nicomachean Ethics and Rhetoric, and in conversation with Nussbaum, Sorabji, and Broadie, it traces a structure of fellow-feeling within Aristotle’s ethics, understood as an attuned responsiveness shaped by evaluative perception. Emotions are treated as forms of ethical attention, and theōria emerges not as a retreat from the moral world but as its quiet transfiguration: a lucid, unpossessive regard for what is real and enduring. The divine in us (to theion) does not retreat from the ethical world, but perfects our most attentive presence to what is quietly enduring and most worthy of care.

To Be at Home in the Market: The Fragility of Recognition in Civil Society

This essay explores whether one can be at home in the market, and whether the institutional world of Bürgerliche Gesellschaft, as Hegel sketches it in the Philosophy of Right, can offer the individual a form of recognition that is at once stable, ethical, and lived. Focusing on occupational life within the system of needs, particularly in §207, it traces the formation of ethical identity where particularity and universality meet, and where the individual becomes something definite, etwas Bestimmtes, shaped and situated through labour and institutional belonging. Yet this reconciliation remains fragile. Drawing on the work of Lisa Herzog and Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch, the essay reflects on how the very forms meant to mediate freedom can estrange it. What endures is not certainty but the unresolved demand of ethical life; a demand that asks us to remain with the question of recognition and to live attentively within its tensions.

The Heart’s Wisdom: Empathy as the Key to Happiness

Happiness, often idealised as an individual pursuit, finds its richest and most enduring expression not in isolation but in the connections forged with others. Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia (εὐδαιμονία), a life of flourishing, emphasises the integration of rationality, virtue, and emotional engagement as essential to the good life. Central to this vision is empathy, a force that transcends self-interest and fosters profound emotional and ethical harmony with the lives of others. Martha Nussbaum builds on this Aristotelian framework, positioning empathy and compassion as indispensable for both individual and collective flourishing. Despite critiques of empathy as biased or potentially harmful, such as those posed by Bloom (2016) and Prinz (2007), this essay argues that empathy remains essential for achieving happiness by fostering emotional connection, moral virtue, and a shared sense of humanity.

Dancing with the Absurd: Faith, Futility, and Rebellion

This essay explores humanity’s confrontation with the absurd, the tension between our longing for meaning and the universe’s silence, through Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus. Each work composes a distinctive existential movement: Kierkegaard envisions a paradoxical leap of faith, Beckett stages inertia and resignation, and Camus celebrates rebellion. Together, these perspectives illuminate existentialism’s enduring power to confront the void, reimagining our struggle for meaning as an ever-evolving interplay of surrender, stasis, and defiance.

Pedagogical Practises 📖

Lights, Camera, Education: Enhancing Focus with a Video-Based Question in Timed Macroeconomics Exams

This case study examines the introduction of a video based question into a high stakes, timed Intermediate Macroeconomics exam, paired with an equivalent written task to explore the impact of assessment modality. Informed by constructive alignment, cognitive load theory, multimodal learning, and digital storytelling, the intervention required students to create explanatory slides and verbally present their analysis of a macroeconomic policy scenario. Analysis suggests that the format change supported some students, particularly in the mid attainment range, in producing more coherent reasoning, fuller use of diagrams, and clearer sequencing. For top performers the impact was minimal, and for a small number of lower performers the additional demands limited gains. These patterns align with research on modality shifts, visual–verbal integration, and purposeful audience awareness. While exploratory, the paired design offers a replicable method for isolating format effects in high stakes assessment. The study indicates that carefully designed video based tasks, adapted from digital storytelling principles, can be feasibly integrated into summative economics exams to broaden how student understanding is demonstrated.