That’s me in action, teaching David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature. “Which part”, you ask? All of it, in ten weeks. And they said it couldn’t be done. Really, that’s what everyone told me. But I heard that Bob Fogelin does it all in a term at Dartmouth. He is one of my heroes, so I just had to go for it. As it turned out, I had time to be quiet and listen, as you can see. You just have to plan carefully.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start from the beginning. On this page, I will describe my background, research, and teaching. And I will illustrate it all with dramatic action shots.
I was a philosophy major at the University of Michigan. My PhD. is from the University of California, Berkeley. My first two teaching jobs were at McGill University, in Montreal, and Stanford University, back in California. I was a member of the Department of Philosophy and the Human Rights Program at the University of Chicago from 1999 to 2006.
My research concerns ethics, political philosophy, and early modern philosophy. I have published papers on justice, nationalism, Thomas Hobbes, and David Hume. At present I am working on Hobbes’s moral theory and questions about human rights and global justice. Here is a list of my major publications.
- “Social Justice, Voluntarism, and Liberal Nationalism” Journal of Moral Philosophy, v. 2 (November, 2005).
- “Global Justice and Health: Is Health Care a Basic Right?,” in Public Health Ethics, ed. M. Boylan (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004).
- “Justice and Law in Hobbes,” Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy v. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
- “Institutional Responsibility for Global Problems,” Philosophical Topics 30 no. 2 (Fall 2002). Reprinted as “Institutional Responsibility for Moral Problems,” in Global Responsibilities: Securing Rights by Defining Obligations, A. Kuper ed. (Routledge, 2005).
- “The Idea of a Momentary Self and Hume’s Theory of Personal Identity,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 7 (1999): 103-122.
In the next year or two, I will publish papers on Bernard Williams’s political philosophy, Hobbes on miracles, human rights, Hobbes on liberty, and institutional theories of justice. I’m also planning to write a book on Hobbes.
I went to graduate school because I enjoyed going to class. It was stimulating and occasionally exciting. In my own courses, I want to give my students that feeling and, to be honest, to recapture it for myself. I’m happy to say that I like my own classes even more than the ones that I took as a student. For me, there’s nothing quite like it.
Of course, no one wants to be the only one in the room enjoying himself. So it was extremely gratifying to receive the University of Chicago’s Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. This award is based on student nominations and given to four or five faculty members a year. It is one of my most cherished honors.
One of the things that I like most about my job is that I’m constantly learning new things. As I said in the Quantrell interview, I started working on Hobbes as a result of preparing to teach my first courses. My training was entirely in contemporary political philosophy and ethics. Having settled on writing a book on Hobbes, I decided that I needed to learn more about early modern philosophy. So I lived in a dorm for a month while attending an NEH Summer Institute on the subject. (I know that isn’t a big deal to you now, but just wait until you’re my age). I pick up new ideas and questions from students all the time. That’s one of the main reasons why going to class is still fun for me.
Looking at the websites for my courses is the best way of getting a sense for what it’s like to take a class with me. Each one includes a syllabus and notes on most class sessions. I find the latter a useful way of having discussion while ensuring that each session demonstrably accomplishes something. I can use the web to put the discussion into the context of the direction of the course, clarify confusing parts, and add material. Plus I find it very helpful when I’m using my classes to learn new material too.
In addition to running classes of my own design, I supervise individual projects such as senior theses, MA theses, and doctoral dissertations. Last year, for instance, I supervised two senior theses on personal identity and one on the relationship between ethics and science. This year, it’s human rights and punishment and Hobbes’s uses of bodily metaphors for the state as a contrast with the Christian ideas of the corpus mysticum. I’m learning an immense amount from these fascinating projects.
I view college as a very special place for both faculty and students alike. My door is (almost) always open and I delight in your achievements.