​​​

Below are my (slightly lengthy) lecture notes for undergraduate courses that I teach more or less regularly at Queen's. The PDF file for each course is at the bottom of the page. 

​

Most years I also teach a seminar course for graduate students and (sometimes) fourth-year undergraduates. Topics vary, but in recent years I have offered seminars on hermeneutics, Nietzsche, Dewey, Heidegger, Marcel, Merleau-Ponty, and Gadamer.

​​

​​

​​

What is Philosophy? An Historical Introduction (Philosophy 111, first PDF below)

1. Introduction
2. Socrates and Plato, “The Apology” and Symposium
3. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
4. Augustine, Confessions (selections)
5. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
6. Thomas Aquinas, A Summary of Philosophy (selections)
7. Michel de Montaigne, The Essays (selections)
8. René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
9. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (selections)
10. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government
11. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
12. Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals
13. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism and On Liberty
14. Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods and “Civil Disobedience”
15. Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

​​​

​​​

​​​

Ancient Greek Philosophy (Philosophy 233, second PDF below)

1. Before Socrates
2. Plato, Republic
3. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

​​​

​​​

​​​

Continental Philosophy, 1800-1900 (Philosophy 273, third PDF below)

1. Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript
2. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
3. Wilhelm Dilthey, Introduction to the Human Sciences

​​​

​​​

​​​

Continental Philosophy, 1900-1960 (Philosophy 373, fourth PDF below)

1. Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Being and Time, “Letter on Humanism,” and “What Calls
for Thinking?”
2. Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy
3. Karl Jaspers, Man in the Modern Age

4. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
5. Gabriel Marcel, Man Against Mass Society

​​​

​​​

​​​

Continental Philosophy, 1960 to the Present (Philosophy 374, fifth PDF below)

1. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science
2. Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future
3. Calvin O. Schrag, Reflections on the Religious, the Ethical, and the Political
4. Jeff Mitscherling and Paul Fairfield, Artistic Creation: A Phenomenological Analysis​​​

​

​

​

"Man, I could tell their stories all day." -- Bob Dylan