Teaching

I teach about philosophy that is distant, historically and/or culturally. Sample courses include:

  • Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

  • Kant to Hegel

  • Spinoza and Hume

  • Buddhist and Western Metaphysics

  • Early Modern European Philosophy, Decentered

  • History of Early Modern European Philosophy: Descartes to Kant

  • German Idealism and Romanticism

  • The Struggle for Recognition and Social Theory from Rousseau to Nietzsche

  • Continental Philosophy: Alienation

  • Free Will, Responsibility, and Determinism

  • Kant: Autonomy, Beauty and the Finality of Nature

  • Hegel's Philosophy of Right

  • Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

  • German Idealism

Decentering

I’ve been working on developing ways to teach in my area — the history of European philosophy — in a way that gives attention as well to courses meant to decenter the Eurocentric perspective. I add a unit on the influence of Islamic philosophy to many classes on the later history of European Philosophy. Two new courses from the list at right were developed in this light:

  • Buddhist and Western Metaphysics

  • Early Modern European Philosophy, Decentered

I have also been looking at ways to fold this work back into some comparative research. I’m experimenting with a couple of ideas on Hegel or Spinoza in relation to Ibn Sina. And here is a paper in progress that grows out of this work:

Between Being and Nothing: Ironies of Hegel’s Placement of Buddhist Philosophy, and Challenges for Hegel

Abstract: Hegel’s Science of Logic, the core of his mature system, famously begins with the categories of Being, Nothing, and Becoming. Hegel associates these respectively with Eleatic, Buddhist, and Heraclitan philosophy. While this is not the focus of the present paper, this association misunderstands Buddhist philosophy, and it would be in keeping with much else that is known if Hegel’s Eurocentrism was part of the cause. But there are some ironies here: the association may be meant to downplay the importance of Buddhist philosophy, but in the act it carries the opposite implication; further, of these three initial categories, Hegel hast the most praise for Becoming, which—between Being and Nothing—is of these three the most resonant with Buddhist philosophy. This allows flipping the script, and taking up an interpretive lens from Buddhist philosophy to better see challenges for Hegel’s philosophy: First, where exactly will it depart from the view that everything is impermanent, and between Being and Nothing? Second, how could it justify such a divergence?