TEACHING
TEACHING STATEMENT
My principal commitment as an educator is to contribute to the intellectual maturity and social awareness of the students I teach. Through daily group discussions and student presentations I encourage students to articulate their thinking and take care to listen seriously to others. Through the lecture portion of my courses I endeavor to make philosophy meaningful, relevant, and clear. I often employ various forms of multimedia and contemporary examples to accomplish this aim.
I believe that encouraging intellectual maturity requires presenting students with a diversity of philosophical positions to evaluate. I accordingly assign sources from the Western canon and non-canonical figures, Continental philosophy, Asian philosophy, Africana philosophy, literature and media. Through such studies I aim to teach students to take on multiple perspectives. This work helps both the development of critical thinking and empathy.
My pedagogical aim is serve my students through guiding them in the discipline of philosophy. This service will hopefully contribute to their personal growth. I further hope that the growth of my student exceeds what I could have imagined or hoped.
ASIAN PHILOSOPHY
Although we may relish the excursion of a cross-cultural adventure, my aim when teaching Asian philosophy course is not only a speculative engagement with the subject. In my courses, I hope to convey the formative presence of Asian philosophy in the contemporary Asian social and political context and further in the world in general. We examine the philosophy of early China and India as well as medieval and modern Japan. We then connect these ideas to their meaningful articulation in other contexts including art, literature, politics, etc. My goal is to convey the living presence of Asian philosophy in the world and encourage students to grasp its presence and meaning in their own lives.
ETHICS
Ethics is perhaps the most unique subdomain of study in the practice of philosophy. It may be one of the few disciplines not open to scientific inquiry due to the basic distinction between “is” and “ought,” the idea that values cannot be derived from a description of the world. For the purposes of any possible human community or even the accomplishment of private desires, ethics is not a question that can be left to the side. In my courses on ethics, I pursue ethics as a problem both unique and urgent.
In my introductory course, I present a comprehensive overview of fundamental concepts in the study of ethics. I endeavor to develop my students' understanding of ethical principles, critical thinking skills, and the ability to do ethical thinking in real-world situations.
My principal commitment as an educator is to contribute to the intellectual maturity and social awareness of the students I teach. Through daily group discussions and student presentations I encourage students to articulate their thinking and take care to listen seriously to others. Through the lecture portion of my courses I endeavor to make philosophy meaningful, relevant, and clear. I often employ various forms of multimedia and contemporary examples to accomplish this aim.
I believe that encouraging intellectual maturity requires presenting students with a diversity of philosophical positions to evaluate. I accordingly assign sources from the Western canon and non-canonical figures, Continental philosophy, Asian philosophy, Africana philosophy, literature and media. Through such studies I aim to teach students to take on multiple perspectives. This work helps both the development of critical thinking and empathy.
My pedagogical aim is serve my students through guiding them in the discipline of philosophy. This service will hopefully contribute to their personal growth. I further hope that the growth of my student exceeds what I could have imagined or hoped.
ASIAN PHILOSOPHY
Although we may relish the excursion of a cross-cultural adventure, my aim when teaching Asian philosophy course is not only a speculative engagement with the subject. In my courses, I hope to convey the formative presence of Asian philosophy in the contemporary Asian social and political context and further in the world in general. We examine the philosophy of early China and India as well as medieval and modern Japan. We then connect these ideas to their meaningful articulation in other contexts including art, literature, politics, etc. My goal is to convey the living presence of Asian philosophy in the world and encourage students to grasp its presence and meaning in their own lives.
ETHICS
Ethics is perhaps the most unique subdomain of study in the practice of philosophy. It may be one of the few disciplines not open to scientific inquiry due to the basic distinction between “is” and “ought,” the idea that values cannot be derived from a description of the world. For the purposes of any possible human community or even the accomplishment of private desires, ethics is not a question that can be left to the side. In my courses on ethics, I pursue ethics as a problem both unique and urgent.
In my introductory course, I present a comprehensive overview of fundamental concepts in the study of ethics. I endeavor to develop my students' understanding of ethical principles, critical thinking skills, and the ability to do ethical thinking in real-world situations.
