Sam is a first-year PhD candidate in Boston University’s joint program in Philosophy and Classical Studies. He works primarily on Plato’s moral psychology, but is also interested in Presocratic philosophy, early modern moral psychology and meta-ethics, and contemporary meta-ontology.
What is your favorite book of all time? (Or top 3). Why? To whom would you recommend them?
My top 3 are The Passion According to G.H., the Symposium, and the Neapolitan Novels. I couldn’t put down Clarice Lispector’s G.H. at all—I finished it in one sitting, and then brought it to every reading group I was a part of and made them read it over several weeks. It’s self-consciously awkward in the way that forces the reader to adjust themselves to the text, taking them by the hand and pulling them through psyche and divinity. On the slim chance that you haven’t yet read the Symposium, I can’t recommend it highly enough—it’s the work of philosophy that first made me realize I wanted to enter the field, and I haven’t yet found another philosophical text that resonates as much with my own life. Finally, Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels quartet are incredibly dynamic contemporary works that read fast, but hit hard and deep, and made me rethink what education means today.
What time of day are you most productive and creative?
10pm-midnight! I’m definitely a night owl, but to caveat, I try not to use this time for busywork. I consider it to be my most productive time because I tend to have a lot of thoughts pop into my head before bed, and often I need to write them down before I can actually get to sleep.
If you could have a one-hour conversation with any philosopher or historical figure from any time, who would you pick and what topic would you choose?
It’s a toss-up between talking to Socrates about Plato or Plato about Socrates—either way, the closeness to those mythical dialogues would be incredible. Socrates might win out in the end because I’d also love to hear just what went down between him and Alcibiades. The actual philosophy would be off-limits, since I like having to grapple with the text of the dialogues to understand it—this conversation would be just to know what it was like to be around them, and what their lives were like in the moments that inspired the dialogues.
What’s your favorite quote?
“Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” (Romans 6:1)
If you were an ice cream, what flavor would you be?
I’ve only had this flavor once, but it’s forever stuck in my head: fior di latte (flower of milk) gelato in Florence. It’s nearly unflavored to let the taste of the cream and sweetness stand unaccompanied, and every time I have vanilla ice cream back in the states, I’m reminded of what I’m missing. Beyond just being my favorite flavor, I think there are some similarities to be drawn with my personality: fior di latte is simultaneously completely upfront with its lack of additional flavors, and incredibly subtle with the gentle tastes of its core ingredients. Likewise, I think I wear my heart on my sleeve, but I’ve been told by my friends that sometimes I can be hard to read for precisely that reason.
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