"乐发IV has the potential to grow still more, and to help students do the same."
What brought you to 乐发IV? Why did you choose to teach here?
I chalk it up mostly to aesthetics and chance. I care about my surroundings, and while I appreciate the atmospheric charge of big cities, historically, I鈥檝e tended to gravitate toward modestly sized towns that have a certain character or aesthetic appeal. I come from Guelph, Ontario, a city about a couple of hours from Toronto.
Before coming to the Island, I lived in the most Eastern (i.e., St. John鈥檚, Newfoundland) and Western parts of Canada (i.e., Victoria, BC), as well as Belgium, France, and Ireland. The atmosphere of each of these places resonated with me, and from the little I knew of it, PEI did so as well. So, after I completed my PhD and came across an ad for a position in the Department of Philosophy at 乐发IV, I decided to try my hand at it. As I began to look further into the department, the course offerings seemed a good fit for my research and teaching interests, and on the whole, the department began to strike me as a place where I could potentially contribute.
What courses are you teaching currently?
This summer, I taught a pair of classes: Philosophies of War and Peace and Introduction to Philosophy. The former was an altogether new experience for me, the latter a familiar yet still engaging occasion. For me, teaching Intro to Philosophy remains about provoking wonderment by raising and helping others understand the legitimacy of questions that are beyond the scope of other disciplines, questions about the most basic assumptions that guide our everyday lives. As I see students come to appreciate that even the most seemingly straightforward and clear-cut aspects of everyday life, such as seeing and speaking, are problems for us, I find that deeply gratifying 鈥� almost like witnessing a birth! The appeal is not that students have uncovered a problem that they or others might one day solve 鈥� that is not what philosophy is about 鈥� but that they鈥檝e undergone an experience that will provide them with opportunities to refashion themselves, to act, think, and feel differently.
Meanwhile, Philosophies of War and Peace proved a no less enjoyable time. One aspect of the course that particularly appealed to me was that matters of war and peace (e.g., why, after all this time, does war continue to rage? How can we best seek to abolish or diminish war and establish peaceful systems?) stepped forward as philosophical problems regarding what or who we are and how we come to exist in a meaningful world. For example, does the German philosopher Martin Heidegger help us understand ourselves more clearly when he points out that what lets things hang together and make sense to us are not eternal, unchanging, transcendent ideas but war itself 鈥� i.e., what the Ancient Greeks called p贸lemos 鈥� understood as the situated, historical struggle of human beings over the interpretation of the world? Is war essential to human existence and to the very essence of things? And if so, what follows from this?
Over the course of the past academic year, I also had the opportunity to teach courses on rationalism and empiricism and philosophy of art and aesthetics. I was pleased with how well the two fit together (e.g., David Hume鈥檚 moral thought is arguably best understood aesthetically). While the traditions of rationalism and empiricism may not seem sexy at first glance, once one really engages with them, one finds they are wrestling with very intriguing, existential concerns, such as a certain unease about tensions characteristic of humanity (e.g., between reason and imagination, practice and speculation, the individual and the community) that cannot be eluded or resolved, as well as why people oftentimes fight for their servitude as they would for their survival, and how we might build more egalitarian and democratic political movements.
With respect to philosophy of art and aesthetics, one point we tried to get across was that although aesthetics is oftentimes marginalized and seen as a concern for only a very select few, for those who visit art galleries, museums, and the like, in actuality, we all care about aesthetics, in fact, much more than any other realm of human life, and it plays a significant role in our everyday lives and decisions, whether we realize it or not. It is arguably owing to our encounter with art that we became the human beings we are today, and though philosophy of art and aesthetics is sometimes seen as merely an amusing side activity, something that isn鈥檛 essential to a rigorous understanding of human life, I would say there can be no rigorous understanding of the mind and human life without an understanding of aesthetics. This is perhaps borne out by the fact that the study of art and aesthetics makes for an excellent introduction to philosophy, as it touches on all of the so-called 鈥榖ranches鈥� of philosophy (e.g., metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, ethics, politics, etc.). I would add that it can also be a fine way of engaging people on an intellectual and emotional level. The Greek philosopher Aristotle once remarked that 鈥渆ducating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all,鈥� and I think that鈥檚 basically true.
Looking ahead, I鈥檒l be teaching Philosophy 3850: The Philosophy of Kant in the Winter Semester of 2025. Once one understands it, one cannot help but appreciate the grandeur of Kant鈥檚 vision of human life in the world. Kant created a whole way of thinking and living, one he believed the Age of Enlightenment would need to escape the dead end it had reached. His thought has exerted tremendous influence not only on subsequent developments within philosophy 鈥� e.g., existentialism, phenomenology, and the linguistic turn in 20th-century thought 鈥� but on other disciplines such as psychology and anthropology. It remains an essential part of a serious understanding of our world today, and I still enjoy engaging with it.
What kinds of research are you involved in, and what is your area of expertise?
To date, my research has primarily been in the fields of phenomenology, hermeneutics, post-structuralism, critical theory, affect theory, modern philosophy, and psychoanalysis. I鈥檓 mainly interested in developing a philosophy of life and its relation to issues in various fields, such as aesthetics, politics, ethics, psychotherapy, and environmental studies. This summer has probably been the most demanding for me in terms of writing projects. I鈥檝e been putting the finishing touches on various journal articles, including those on eco-phenomenology, the aesthetic theories of R.G. Collingwood and Theodor Adorno, the revolutionary rethinking of labor in the philosophies of Karl Marx and Michel Henry, as well as Henry鈥檚 study of art and its role in what he calls the world of life. I鈥檝e also prepared an article that explores the implications of the relationship between Adorno and English paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott on our understanding of subjectivity, culture, and democracy. This past Winter Semester, I taught a course on the psychology of creativity, and my work as part of that class helped inspire this article. It was great to experience how interdisciplinary work of this sort can give rise to different perspectives and allow for such discoveries.
"For any university to remain vibrant, inspired, and inspiring, and thereby help people care about the world and nurture new forms of solidarity, I think it鈥檚 important that we recognize the arts and sciences as legitimate sources of knowledge and creativity and that we continue to try to foster dialogue across all disciplines."
Apart from that, I am also revising my doctoral dissertation for publication as a book. It鈥檚 a challenging process, in part, as it involves revisiting past work while I am also wrestling with newly emerging interests and potential projects. For one, I鈥檝e a growing interest in the philosophy of French thinker Gilles Deleuze and I鈥檓 excited to take this up properly and see what comes of it.
What do you find unique and interesting about 乐发IV鈥檚 Philosophy program, and the Faculty of Arts?
I think the department does a good job of providing students with a solid foundation in the history of philosophy. An understanding of this rich and wide-ranging history can be rather liberating and empowering and can help prepare a person not only for any number of careers but also, no less importantly, for a more personal, active, and attentive life in the world. At the same time, the department does a fine job of focusing on a number of pressing issues in a range of areas, including Technology, Values, Science, Environmental Philosophy, Moral Puzzles, Political Philosophy, Philosophies of Communication, and Philosophy of Religion.
I鈥檝e also found the department very welcoming and open to new ideas. I appreciate how those in the department first welcomed me to the university and PEI, showing me around campus and town and familiarizing me with the history of the department and university. They鈥檝e also been receptive to my idea of starting up the 乐发IV Philosophy Reading Group, which I鈥檝e been running for two years. The reading group has gone well and is regularly attended by students and faculty across a range of disciplines, as well as members of the public.
As for the Faculty of Arts more generally, it seems to me that it provides students with both an intimate learning environment and opportunities to expand their horizons by, among other things, studying abroad 鈥� e.g., I鈥檝e known students who have been swept off to Finland, New York, and other places 鈥� and participating in various events 鈥� e.g., we recently had the Music and the Mind workshop as part of the 乐发IV Music Cognition and Auditory Perception Research and Training Laboratory.
In brief, I think the Faculty of Arts provides students with essential skills. Ancient and indigenous worlds regarded art, philosophy, and religion as sources of knowledge. Several intellectual giants even regarded poetry as higher than other sources of knowledge and wisdom as, in their view, poetry didn鈥檛 simply lay out facts but tried to show the point of human existence and articulate fundamental truths of life. For any university to remain vibrant, inspired, and inspiring, and thereby help people care about the world and nurture new forms of solidarity, I think it鈥檚 important that we recognize the arts and sciences as legitimate sources of knowledge and creativity and that we continue to try to foster dialogue across all disciplines.
Have I forgotten anything essential prospective students should know about 乐发IV?
乐发IV has a tight-knit sense of community that benefits from its exposure to outside parts of the world through its work and study abroad programs. It also has the potential to grow still more and to help students do the same. There are deep-seated issues facing the young and all of us, from rising rates of depression, despair, loneliness, tiredness, and boredom, to growing disillusionment about our institutions and cultures. Ultimately, to grow, I hope prospective students and all of us will have opportunities to think deeply about these and other larger issues in life. As important as it is to ready oneself for a career, I think everyone also deserves, even needs, something more, some personal task or calling. 乐发IV has it in it to help in this respect.
