OVERVIEW

Good philosophical teaching should do three things. First, it should instill in students the tools of critical thinking, so that they may be better equipped to think through and solve problems that confront them in their own lives. Second, it should bring to life the foundational texts of the philosophical tradition, so that students may encounter there the questions which motivate these texts as live and pressing questions, and so that they may be drawn in to examine and critically evaluate the answers which these texts offer. Third and finally, it should cultivate in students a confidence in themselves as critical thinkers and teach them that they are not simply vessels of another’s instruction, but thinkers in their own right, who possess the capacity to think matters through and form opinions that are genuinely their own.

EXPERIENCE

PRIMARY INSTRUCTOR
Introduction to Philosophy (Fall 2022)
Introduction to Philosophy (Fall 2022)
Introduction to Ethics (Spring 2022)
Plato’s Republic (Fall 2021)
Happiness in Ancient Philosophy (Spring 2020)

TEACHING ASSISTANT
Philosophy of Law (Spring 2022)
Philosophy of Law (Fall 2018)
Introduction to Philosophy (Spring 2018)
Philosophy and Science Fiction (Fall 2017)

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

Introduction to Philosophy (syllabus)

The aim of the course is to provide students an opportunity to reflect on and get clear about their ‘first principles’. First principles are the ultimate commitments we use to make sense of the world and find our place within it. For example, ‘there is a god’, ‘I am my soul’, ‘human happiness consists in pleasure’… These are different ‘first principles’. They are ‘principles’ in the sense that we use them to make the world intelligible. And they are ‘first’ in the sense that they are they lie at the foundations of our worldview, shaping not only how we understand and think about isolated issues or topics, but the world as a whole. Socrates had the insight that our first principles our best discovered, not through introspection, but through conversation, and the goal of this course is to introduce students to the conversation that has. Specifically, the course has three units. In the first, we explore questions of happiness and the human good in the ancient philosophical tradition. in the second, we examine questions of epistemology and ontology as they arise against the backdrop of the scientific revolution in Descartes’ Meditations. In the third, we explore questions of personhood and agency in Humes’ Enquiry.

Introduction to Ethics (syllabus)

This course is intended to serve as a crash course introduction to the field of ethics.. The course divides into three parts. In the first, we survey the three main frameworks for thinking about ethical problems—namely, utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics. In the second, we consider the question of happiness from an ethical point of view, focusing on three alternative theories of human well-being—namely, hedonism, preference satisfaction, and an objective list theory. In the third, we consider in depth a handful of specific moral questions, such as the morality of the death penalty and whether it is permissible to eat meat.

Plato’s Republic (syllabus)

The idea behind this course is to use Plato’s Republic as an introduction to ancient philosopher more generally. The Republic covers many of the themes and ideas that are deeply important to ancient thinkers: How should one live one’s life? What it is the nature of knowledge and understanding? What is the nature of the universe? How should the political community be organized? But I think that the special value of the Republic as an introduction to ancient philosophy lies in the fact that the Republic raises these questions in a context which immediately connects them to the central question that motivates the book, namely the question of human happiness. In this respect, the Republic is representative of the ancient philosophical tradition more generally, for the central question which motivated this whole tradition of thinkers was how to live one’s life. The Republic serves as a window not only onto the set of topics in which ancient philosophers were interested, but it serves to illuminate the idea that ultimately these topics deserve inquiry because they bear on how one should lead one’s live.

Happiness in Ancient Philosophy (syllabus)

One of the main questions that concerned ancient philosophers was how we ought to live our lives. This is a question about human happiness or flourishing, something the ancients called eudaimonia. Different schools of thought had different answers to this question: some thought that living a happy life was a matter of maximizing pleasure; others thought that living a happy live meant doing the right thing. In addition, ancient philosophers thought philosophy, which they understood as the persistent search for the truth, was in one way or another a crucial component of a happy life. Some thought happiness just was a life of philosophy, others thought that philosophy was an instrument or tool with which one could achieve the state of human happiness. This course examines some of what the main thinkers in ancient philosophy had to say about these issues. In doing so, we focus on two main questions: (i) what were the theories of happiness that these thinkers propounded? In other words, what did they think happiness consisted in? And, (ii) how did they understand the role of philosophy in making one’s life a happy one?