Teaching Approach

My approach to teaching philosophy is grounded in two convictions. First, philosophy education should cultivate students’ ability to critically move across conceptual frameworks and forms of reasoning that are often treated as isolated within particular disciplines or intellectual traditions. By comparing and evaluating competing frameworks, students can develop greater intellectual flexibility and independence in their engagement with the world. Second, philosophy is best learned not through the passive reception of doctrines, but through active participation in collaborative reasoning with both peers and instructors. These convictions shape both my course design and classroom pedagogy.

Examples of Collaborative Learning

Selected Course Designs

Comparative Moral Reasoning: Theory, Experiment, and Social Practice 

This course explores and compares human moral reasoning across different social practices and philosophical traditions. Drawing on moral theory, experimental philosophy, cross-cultural psychology, and social philosophy, this course examines competing models of moral reasoning. Students will learn how experimental philosophy and psychology challenge those models of moral reasoning and open alternative possibilities. Students will also learn how different models of moral reasoning are applied across different social practices and explore the potential or the limitations of those models.

Link to Sample Syllabus

Comparative Folk Philosophy: Reasoning Across Cultures 

This course explores how folk concepts and folk reasoning differ across domains and cultures. Drawing on experimental philosophy, cross-cultural psychology, Chinese philosophy, and comparative philosophy, this course compares similarities and differences in East Asian and Western laypersons’ conceptions of agency, moral reasoning, and categorization styles. Each unit combines empirical research with theoretical analysis and includes in-class group simulation activities that allow students to experience different forms of reasoning.

Link to Sample Syllabus

Comparative Approaches to Global Justice: From Principles to Structural Struggles 

This course compares principle-based and structural approaches to global justice. Drawing on political philosophy, political theory, international relations, international political economy, and world-systems theory, students explore competing explanations of and responses to global injustice. The first part examines Rawlsian and utilitarian approaches to global justice. The second part focuses on Iris Young’s account of structural injustice, the capability approach, and global value chains and power politics as potential sources of structural injustice. The course concludes with a case study of China’s rise, allowing students to apply and critically evaluate the strengths and limitations of these competing approaches to global injustice. 

Link to Sample Syllabus

Confucian Role Ethics: A Thematic Reading of the Dialogues of Confucius 

This course offers a thematic reading of the underexplored Confucian text the Dialogues of Confucius (Kongzi Jia Yu 孔子家语). The first part explores the historical status of the Dialogues of Confucius and examines two recent developments in Confucian ethics: (1) the rise of Confucian role ethics and (2) the Confucian response to the situationist critique of virtue ethics. Rather than following the text chapter by chapter, the second part of the course is organized around three central domains of Confucian life—family, education, and politics—allowing students to reconstruct Confucius’ views on roles, relationships, and responsibilities across the text. The course concludes by inviting students to reflect on how Confucius’ ethical thought can contribute to contemporary normative theory.

Link to Sample Syllabus

Teaching Experience