An Introduction to Phenomenology

I have been meaning for some time to present a brief introduction to the phenomenological method developed by Husserl and his followers. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting excerpts from my presentation as I continue to work on it.

End of the Semester

Here we are at the end of the Fall semester and I realize that I have not posted anything new since before the election. As this semester comes to a close, I find myself reflecting back over what I have taught, what my students (hopefully) have learned, and what I should take away from my experiences. Overall, while I enjoy teaching foundations of logical reasoning, most of the enjoyment I get from teaching came from my seminar on the existence of God. Teaching the seminar for the first time allowed me to see what works for teaching freshmen philosophy, and what does not. I am very happy to say that most of the students did extremely well, both in their papers and in the disussions we had in class. The days when I saw the "lightbulb" go off when a student grasped a difficult concept, or when a student would take an example or image I used and tweak it to make it work even better, were some of the happiest times of my young teaching career. I wish to thank all my students, especially those in the seminar, who showed their interest in the topics we discussed and who give me hope that they will go on to do great things.