My main research project expands my dissertation into a series of papers on protreptic arguments—that is, arguments meant to exhort us to practice philosophy—in Plato, the Naiyāyika Pakṣilasvāmin Vātsyāyana, and the Buddhists Dharmakīrti and Dharmottara. Each of these philosophers begins with the straightforward idea that knowledge is helpful for making our way in the world and develops it in strikingly different ways. I argue that in the Euthydemus, Plato’s Socrates maintains that although wisdom is neither necessary nor sufficient for happiness, wisdom can be a cause thereof and should be pursued for that reason. For Vātsyāyana in the Nyāya-bhāṣya, the value of knowledge consists in its ability to procure objects that confer pleasure and, finally, to achieve liberation, yet knowledge needn’t obtain its object in every instance. In the Nyāya-bindu-ṭīkā, Dharmottara holds that knowledge is necessary for every instance of success, and he contends that if knowledge weren’t necessary, we would not strive to cultivate it. Two upshots of my analysis are an understanding of these philosophers in their own right and an appreciation of the different ways instrumental reason relates the practice philosophy to the human good.

Further research projects include analyzing protreptic arguments in Plato’s Apology, Gorgias, and Phaedo in light of contemporary decision theory and defending various cognitive interventions, especially skeptical ones, for destructive emotions in Greek and Indian thought.