Courses and Syllabi

Introduction to Comparative Thought
Designed to fulfill a general education Introduction to Philosophy requirement, this course focuses on developing broad literacies that include cultural, technological, media, and historical literacies. The content of the course changes often with the earliest syllabi focused on cross-cultural philosophy in a more traditional sense. The most recent iterations of this class have focused more on the motif of attention and what it means to relate and care to world rapidly transformed by AI and digital technology. Authors and traditions covered have included: Plato, Descartes, Locke, Lorde, Stiegler, Odell, Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Vine Deloria Jr., ecological ethics, Nkrumah, Aristotle, McLuhan, Watsuji, et al.

Phenomenology
Despite being among the most important and influential philosophical innovations in the West during the 20th century, it can be difficult to say just what phenomenology is “about”. Is it about meaning? Is it about experience? Is it about the things themselves? For Husserl, phenomenology was the name given to the task of building a new philosophical method from the ground up. Phenomenology, then, like much of philosophy, is concerned with truth. But what is the truth? Is it the logical correspondence of an adaequatio  or playful revealing and concealing of aletheia? Is truth in language or the things themselves? In this course we will attempt to grasp phenomenology as a philosophical method and praxis. We will investigate how phenomenologically oriented thinkers understand their task and the important role played by the structure of experience. While there are many trajectories that can be taken through phenomenology, I have chosen to focus this semester on developments traced out between Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Derrida. We will begin with Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and its difficult relationship to his own critique of psychologism. We will then examine Heidegger’s development of phenomenology against Husserl’s transcendentalism. Finally, we will consider the innovations made by Derrida in the wake of both. Central to our inquiry will be the relationship of nature and language to the horizon that gives shape to experience.

Indigenous Thinking in the Americas
Designed to fulfill a requirement for American Philosophy. The main goal of this course is to approach philosophies indigenous to the Americas as modalities of contemporary thought. As a non-native, the course was designed with humility in mind. Approaches to course materials focused on two points: (1) to read as literally and faithfully as possible and attempt to work within the structures of thought determined by the texts themselves and (2) to reflect continually on the historical, material, and linguistic circumstances that create barriers in accessibility. Authors include: Vine Deloria Jr., Brian Burkhart, V.F. Cordova, Laurie Anne Whitt, Anne Waters, Wub-e-ke-niew, and Rudolfo Kusch. Black Elk Speaks is assigned as preliminary reading.

Social and Political Philosophy
This course addresses the social and political realities of humankind from a variety of philosophical perspectives. It adds that these realities are inherently ecological, suggesting that the social and political realities of humankind extend beyond the merely human into the non-human world. The course will challenge the assumption of a divide between nature and culture that dominates contemporary visions of the socio-political. Rather than survey various sociopolitical orientations in the history of philosophy, the material for this course will be used to examine what makes us social and political subjects in the world. What kind of subjects are we? How does our social existence and orientation extend beyond the human as an isolated sphere of phenomena (culture, technology)? What constitutes a community of ecological subjects? Thus the question of human ethics becomes one of ecological ethics. How do we orient ourselves and act in the spaces where we move and live? How do we understand our existence as extensions of such spaces? Authors include: John Locke, Fred Moten, Val Plumwood, Kim TallBear, E Richard Atleo (Umeek), Gary Snyder, Frédéric Neyrat, Watsuji, Augustin Berque, Vandana Shiva, Jason W. Moore.

Major Themes in Philosophy: A Singular:Common Life
An investigation of the tension between the clandestine and common, the singular and the plural as it stands at the heart of human social life and experience. How can the seemingly singular lives of individual persons form a community that reflects the truth a common world of the human and non-human alike? Primary authors are: Rousseau, Hölderlin, Jean-Luc Nancy, Agamben.

Ancient and Medieval Philosophy
Course began with readings from Homer, Hesiod, and Heraclitus. Focused on Plato’s dialogues the Republic, Phaedrus, Symposium, and Timaeus. All readings aimed at a reading of the Timaeus as a work of social philosophy. Course closed with some selections from Plotinus.

Art, Experience, and Politics
Course in Phenomenology that focuses on the relationship between art and experience. Core readings from Martin Heidegger, Julia Kristeva, and Walter Benjamin present this relationship in light of its social and political significance. Other texts included from JH Prynne, Lisa Robertson, Gerard Granel, Roland Barthes, and Frédêric Neyrat.

Philosophy as Conviviality
General education course focused on the classical question of “the good life”. The “good life” is understood here as an ethical practice, philosophy as a convivial and dialogical practice within both the human and more-than-human worlds. Readings from James Heisig, Plato, Vine Deloria Jr., Marx, Watsuji, and the Heart Sutra.

Upcoming Classes

Marx and the Hellworld
Course built around readings from Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts, Grundrisse, and Capital, focused on his understandings of the human, political economy, and history. Core texts supplemented by selections from Louis Althusser’s For Marx and Phil Neel’s Hellworld.

Approaches To Emptiness (Major Themes in Philosophy)
Course dealing with the problem of ontological ambiguity or the absence of ontological principles following the motifs of nothingness and emptiness in the work of Martin Heidegger and Kyoto School authors. Preliminary readings and orientation come from Reiner Schürmann’s Broken Hegemonies. Reading list consists in Heidegger’s Bremen Lectures, Nishida’s essay “Bashō”, and selections from Nishitani’s Religion and Nothingness.

If you would like full syllabi or reading lists, please reach through the contact form.