Introduction
Having struggled through academia as a low-income and underrepresented student, it is my goal to help other underrepresented students achieve their academic and professional goals, and to work to rebuild academia with these students in mind. The Dougherty Family College shares these goals, and I am excited to team up with this passionate group of educators and students.
Research Interests
Morales's research interests include the history of Christian thought (especially medieval mystical theology), modern philosophy (especially existentialism and French phenomenology), and economic and political theory. His first manuscript, The Ethics and Politics of Friendship, argues that emergent forms of authoritarianism are symptoms of modern cultures of egoism. Contributing to discussions on Ralph Waldo Emerson's influence on Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, he argues that friendship is a foundation for an ethics of integral human development—one which emphasizes the holistic spiritual, social, and environmental dimensions of human flourishing. Intervening in debates in theology and French phenomenology, he develops friendship as a love that reveals autonomy as vocation, arguing that loving commitments undermine neoliberal conceptions of freedom understood as self-sufficiency. His current project explores the religious, ethical, and political implications of loneliness.