Teaching Philosophy

Peer Instruction is a simple and effective technique you can use to make lectures more interactive, more engaging, and more effective learning experiences. Although well known in science and mathematics, the technique appears to be little known in the humanities. In this paper, we explain how Peer Instruction can be applied in philosophy lectures. We report the results from our own experience of using Peer Instruction in undergraduate courses in philosophy, formal logic, and critical thinking. We have consistently found it to be a highly effective method of improving the lecture experience for both students and the lecturer.

What are some of the most useful tools and techniques for teaching about suicide? How can this topic be used to deepen students’ understanding of Socrates and existentialism? Which concepts, skills, and exercises can facilitate student interest and insight? This essay will explore Socrates’ Apology as a means to teach analytical issues on suicide, Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus to teach existentialist issues, and finally the cases of Kurt Cobain and Ludwig van Beethoven to teach the application of existentialist issues.

Moral experience may be parsed at different levels of abstraction. We might work variously at the level of meta-ethical reflection; normative ethics; the principles, doctrines, and character traits of everyday morality; or the sometimes simple, sometimes messy, business of actual moral judgment. We should strive to be clear with our students (and ourselves) about the differences between these levels and the hazards of crudely conflating them.

Below I will review a number of recent publications in philosophy of art and aesthetics. Since aestheticians and philosophers of art currently have a wide selection of texts available to them that would be appropriate for instructional use, it seems useful to evaluate some of these recent texts. The texts I have chosen to review vary in style, organization, and type. Because there are so many ways one could teach an aesthetics or philosophy of art course, it is useful to pursue a diversity of content in assessing some of the more recent offerings in the discipline.