Teaching

I routinely teach my own variations of several General Studies courses, including The Big Questions, Morality and the Good Life (both in-person and online), History of Ancient Philosophy, and History of Modern Philosophy (both in-person and online). Recent versions of Morality and the Good Life have included courses on technology, environmental ethics and the philosophy of nature, and the ethics of authenticity. In Ancient Philosophy, I bring literary and poetic texts to bear on the philosophical agendas of Plato and Aristotle. My History of Modern Philosophy has centered on the problem of skepticism from Montaigne through Kant, with readings in Shakespeare (Hamlet or King Lear) and Pascal, and the place of reflection on science and religion throughout the period, with more recent iterations focused on conceptions of nature from Bacon and Descartes through the early German Romantic philosophers (especially Novalis and Schelling).

I've taught the following upper-division lecture courses and seminars, including capstone courses for graduating seniors (listed as Senior Seminars):

• Ethical Theories (repeating)

• Kantian Ethics (Senior Seminar)

• Major Philosophers: Heidegger (Senior Seminar)

• Existential Philosophy (repeating)

• Phenomenology (repeating)

• Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (Senior Seminar)

• Subjectivity and Nature in German Idealism (Senior Seminar)

• American Philosophy: Pragmatism

• The Legacy of Idealism in Emerson, Thoreau, and William James

• Aesthetics

• Major Philosophers: Nietzsche (Senior Seminar)

• Agency and Imagination in the Films of David Lynch (twice)

• Major Philosophers: Kant and Novalis (Senior Seminar)

• The Rise of German Romantic Political Philosophy (Senior Seminar)

• Kant and the Philosophy of Nature (Independent Study)

• Nietzsche and Heidegger on Art and the Problem of Nihilism (Senior Seminar)

• Early Modern Philosophies of Nature: Descartes through Novalis

• Heidegger’s Hölderlin (Senior Seminar)

• The Concept of Life in Early Modern Philosophy

• Romantic Philosophies of Nature (Senior Seminar)

• Major Philosophers: Thoreau (Senior Seminar)

• Morality on Film: The Cinema of Terrence Malick (Senior Seminar)