Luke Ciancarelli entered Harvard’s Philosophy department as a PhD candidate after receiving a BA in Philosophy and English from Yale. He specializes in moral psychology and the history of modern philosophy, and he also has a long-standing interest in the possibility of metaphysics and the relationship between philosophy and literature. His dissertation is an historical and conceptual investigation into the passions, emotional episodes that incline us to act. It uses the subject to distinguish two different perspectives on thought – one external or “observational,” the other internal or “first-personal” – and to argue for the continuing significance of the concept of soul, a notion largely lost to contemporary philosophy.