Selected Writings
by David J. Frost
In Philosophy Now, Issue 93. Nietzsche’s quasi-self-help offerings are surprisingly resonant with recent empirical discoveries and the dual-process theory of psychology.
I wrote the first chapter of Girls and Philosophy, a book about Lena Dunham’s HBO show Girls, published in Open Court’s Philosophy and Pop Culture Series. My title is a play on Adorno’s “How Not to Watch Television.”
Book review of Maggie Nelson’s On Freedom
In Ruminate, now defunct.
An essay on the benighted insurrection of January 6th, published in As It Ought To Be magazine.
“Gnosticism and the Smoking Gun”
At The Smart Set. “It does not matter why Trump does what he does. The what is bad enough.”
Book review of Experimental Philosophy by Joshua Alexander
In Philosophia. Philosophers have appealed to commonsense intuitions since Socrates. But in the 2000s some thinkers started a movement to measure those intuitions empirically using the statistical tools of social science.
Book review of Islam and the West: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida by Mustapha Cherif
My accessible presentation of Derrida on democracy. From Philosophical Papers.
“Halfway Twice Is Not Yet Once”
About my best friend’s death at fourteen-years-old, which started my interest in big, philosophical questions. Originally published in SLAB Issue 16. Or read it archived here on Substack.
“Pre-Galilean Ballistics Drawings.”
Before Galileo, laymen and ballistics experts alike incorrectly drew the trajectory of cannonballs not as parabolas but partially with straight lines, which was in line with the Aristotelian physics still prominent during the Middle Ages. Perception is theory-laden. Believing is seeing.
Unclench your phantom fist.
“On the Genealogy of Happiness”
Excavating the unforeseen consequences of the Enlightenment’s equation of value, virtue, pleasure, and happiness.
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Coming up:
Forthcoming in the Missouri Review
Watch out for the Missouri Review Summer 2026 issue in June. My years-long writing project on the psychological effects of denying free will culminates in a 7500-word essay accepted for publication in the physical journal.