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A Heretical Philosophy Professor
Another tale of successfully reorienting oneself
Yes, heretical in that I dared to follow through on an idea that went against decades if not centuries of tradition. Luckily I had the academic freedom to think outside the box and act freely.
Yesterday, wrapping up the winter, I shared how my Spouse and I changed our thinking about how we stayed warm this past winter.
Today, wrapping up the academic year, I will share how I radically changed my curriculum of my Introduction to Philosophy course.
A year ago, I wrote about the heretical idea of skipping Plato’s philosophy.
That’s exactly what I did the last two terms in my Intro courses. The results were better than I had imagined.
To be clear, I am not dismissing the importance of Plato in the history of Western philosophy. He was ancient Greece’s first systematic philosopher, and he, with Aristotle, is one of the two main pillars of Western scholarship, not just in philosophy but in all intellectual inquiry. I have…
