Here is my response to the question, “what are the hardest classes you ever took or taught?” Continue reading My Hardest Classes →

The pansy, a symbol of freethought.

After my recent post, “Outgrowing Religion,” I received the following from Jason, a former student who I admittedly do not remember. (I’ve taught approximately 10,000 students over a 30-year career.) Let me say that I have seldom been so moved by a correspondence. Continue reading Letter From A Former Student →

 My Academic Geneology

I received my Ph.D. in philosophy in 1992, completing my dissertation under the direction of Richard J. Blackwell, who at the time held the Danforth Chair in Humanities at Saint Louis University. He is currently Professor Emeritus.

Professor Blackwell (1929 -) was educated at MIT, (where he studied history and physics) and St. Louis University, where he received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1954. Later he did graduate work in physics. Continue reading Academic Geneology →

The Thinker – Rodin

It is almost fifty years since my higher education began, and in that time there have been hundreds who have influenced me—most notably Plato and Aristotle, Shankara and Buddha, Epictetus and Aurelius, Hobbes and Descartes, Schopenhauer, Orwell, Piaget. But a few have had a special impact on my thought, and for whom I feel the greatest affinity. All are from the Western philosophical or scientific tradition, the only tradition about which I’m qualified to make good judgments. I list them in the order I encountered their thought. Continue reading Intellectual Heroes →