Posted on September 15, 2021 Leave a Comment
Hello everyone, and greetings from Sitka, Alaska. I’m approaching the three-week mark of a four-month stay here, where I’m teaching at a young institution called Outer Coast, whose mission (inspired by Deep Springs College in California) is to provide a holistic education that includes academics, service, labour, and self-governance, with a strong connection to place. […]
Posted on September 8, 2021 Leave a Comment
Hello everyone. If all goes according to plan, you’ll be receiving this monthly newsletter on the first of the month as usual, at which time I should be walking along the beach of the Tatchu Peninsula on Vancouver Island. I’m writing this on Wednesday, July 28th. Tomorrow morning, my friend Paul and I drive out to […]
Posted on September 1, 2021 Leave a Comment
Hello everyone. Welcome to the month of July! The first day of July is also Canada Day, marking the anniversary of Canadian Confederation in 1867. Festivities this year are a bit muted on account of recent revelations about mass graves of indigenous children on the sites of former residential schools. The residential school system, which only […]
Posted on August 25, 2021 Leave a Comment
Welcome to the month of June! I’m celebrating the first of the month by diving into the second week of classes on the philosophy of love and friendship, where we’re wrapping up our discussion of Plato’s Symposium. Are we persuaded by the vision Socrates claims to have received from a mysterious woman according to which […]
Posted on August 18, 2021 Leave a Comment
Hello everyone. It’s been quiet over here in the world of online philosophy for the past month but things are starting to buzz again. A week ago I announced this summer’s course on The Philosophy of Love and Friendship, starting in late May. If you haven’t already, you can register your interest here. I’m finalizing the […]
Posted on August 11, 2021 Leave a Comment
Hello everyone. Spring is springing and over here in the world of online philosophy teaching, winter classes are wrapping up. Monday saw the conclusion of “‘Know Thyself’: Knowledge and Self-Knowledge in Philosophy and Literature,” where we spent the final weeks discussing the ethical value of literature and contending with contemporary scholars Noël Carroll, Martha Nussbaum, and […]
Posted on August 5, 2021 Leave a Comment
Hello everyone, We’re about halfway through the winter session of online philosophy classes now. In “’Know Thyself’: Knowledge and Self-Knowledge in Literature and Philosophy,” we’re making the shift from ancient Greece to the modern world, starting today with two great writers of the late nineteenth century, Leo Tolstoy and Oscar Wilde, who couldn’t have been […]
Posted on July 29, 2021 Leave a Comment
Hello everyone, It’s been exactly a month since I sent out my last monthly newsletter. Is this a coincidence? Or could there be a pattern here? David Hume has an elegant and confounding argument whose conclusion is that we are never rationally justified in making predictions about future events based on past regularities. So don’t get […]
Posted on July 21, 2021 Leave a Comment
Happy New Year, everyone! I’m writing to you from Galiano Island, British Columbia, which has a damp, quiet beauty in the winter months. Christmas morning was merely cloudy so I went on a hike up Mount Galiano. From the summit I could see someone doing donuts in a boat below, which from my vantage point left […]