Teaching Materials
These pages focus on the study of philosophy and are intended for both students and those opsimathic few who have somehow failed to settle all of life’s important questions during their student days.
The links below divide into two, with some overlap: links to classes and seminars, both current and archived, and links to resources for the study of philosophy. Most but not all of the resources linked are open access; they will be of interest to both students and more advanced researchers. Those which are not open access can usually be accessed at no cost through academic or public library subscriptions.
A Word of Caution and Comfort
Anyone who has made a serious study of philosophy will be aware of its demands, its joys, and its frustrations. Here, I suppose, the Oxford philosopher J. Cook Wilson offered such solace as might be offered to those undertaking its study:
'Be comforted. Philosophic thinking is always a great struggle. It is, I am sure, far harder than any other, and I don’t suppose there is any other subject in which long and determined thought may be so apparently unrewarded. It is full of disappointments. An investigation carried on perseveringly for a long time may end in the discovery of a fact of consciousness which upsets the theory so laboriously worked out. The utmost gain one has seems to be that one has found out what will not do. Now this is a gain, but one is not at once prepared for the new effort which it suggests. The trouble is that one feels life is so short, but philosophy seems very much longer.’
—J. Cook Wilson, comforting a despondent student
Resources for the Study of Philosophy
General Resources
The single best general open-access resource for the study of philosophy is:
This is a dynamic enclycopedia, which is to say that each entry is updated every five years; as a result, it reflects the state of the art on is entries, each of which contains a useful, current bibliography for further study.
If you are simply looking for information on a particular philosopher, movement, or topic, The Stanford Encyclopedia should be your first port of call.
For slightly more advanced work, an invaluable resource is:
This is a comprehensive index of articles published in the leading journals of philosophy. Although this data base is not open access, it is easily accessed though almost any academic libraries and through many public libraries as well.
Some books I have authored principally with students in mind:
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Ancient Philosophy; a Contemporary Introduction, 2nd edition (Routledge: 2023)
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This work is also available in:
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Japanese
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Chinese
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This work traces the entire history of ancient philosophy, selectively to be sure, from the Presocratics and Sophists; Socrates Plato, Aristotle, the Hellenistic Schools of Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism; and into Late Antique Philosophy, focussing on Proclus and Augustine.
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Aristotle, 2nd edition (Routledge: 2014)
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This work is also available in:
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Chinese
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Turkish
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This is an omnibus work, covering all of Aristotle's philosophy, including chapters on all aspects of Aristotle's philosophy. It is designed so that after reading the first two, orienting chapters, students can visit individual chapters on specific topics, such as Aristotle's metaphysics, psychology, ethics, rhetoric, or poetics.
Finally, for a later period, I have co-authored with the eminent Robert Pasnau, a general introduction to the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas:
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The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press: 2016)
When we wrote this book, we had the view that although Aquinas had been well-served by philosophers with a primary interest in his philosophy of religion, the focus of this interest had the unwelcome effect of shading his many other interests, including those in metaphysics, in psychology, and in virtue ethics.
We thought then, and I think now, that Aquinas deserves to be studied as a core member of the philosophical canon, alongside, looking backward, Plato and Aristotle, and, looking forwards, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. All of these figures justly receive attention; Aquinas, by contrast, has been unjustly neglected—at least where the teaching canon is concerned.
Otherwise, a few web presentations, made in collaboration with Prof. Meghan Sullivan (University of Notre Dame), in conjunction with her wildly (and justly) popular introduction to philosophy, God and the Good Life:
Personal Resources
Representative Classes and Seminars
These are drawn from some of my recent and not so recent classes and seminars, offered at UCSD, Notre Dame, and Oxford, both undergraduate and graduate.
The links are to my lecture slides, which some have found useful. You will note that they are markedly logocentric: this is because I take the basic unit of philosophical communication in classes and seminars to be the argument. So, I reproduce many arguments of many different flavors, in an effort to focus attention and discussion.
Given some past misunderstandings, one pedagogical practice bears emphasizing: that I present an argument in a class or seminar does not by itself imply that I myself endorse it (though sometimes I do). Rather, an argument as presented is usually my best effort to represent the progression of the thought of a given philosopher or philosophical text in the most transparent and economical way I can manage.
I post these slides with several reservations and with one request.
The reservations stems from the fact that I have posted slides in public sites in the past, only to find my formulations showing up unacknowledged on other websites or even in various handbooks and other professional publications.
So, my request: while I do not suppose I own these arguments, I would be grateful if you would indicate their source if you find yourself able to make use of them—but, that said, if you can make use of them, please do.
By the same token, do not hesitate to contact me with any problems you may identify, remembering, though, as I have said, that I sometimes, for purely pedagogical purposes, present arguments I take to be flawed in interesting or instructive ways.
University of California San Diego
University of Notre Dame
Oxford University
Under Construction