Teaching & Talking Philosophy

I taught philosophy at Stanford from 2011-2023.  My undergraduate teaching included courses on Ethical Theory, Trust, Moral Motivation, and Moral Luck.  I also regularly taught an introductory ethics course I designed for the students in Stanford's Human Biology Program called Ethics in a Human Life.  For graduate students, I taught seminars on lying & deception, on obligation, on moral motivation, on political theory, and on ethical rationalism.

Beginning in 2017 my friend Joshua Landy (Stanford CompLit) and I began teaching a Film & Philosophy course together.  It became one of the most popular courses in the humanities at Stanford, quintupling in size to over 150 students!  

The course included some great movies: Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind; Memento; Blade Runner; The Seventh Seal; My Dinner with Andre; La Jetée; Arrival; Do The Right Thing; The Dark Knight; No Country for Old Men; and Fight Club.  It also included a healthy does of good philosophy by Locke, Adam Smith, Sartre, Camus, Kant, Bernard Williams, and plenty of others.  The course was super fun, but still very rigorous.  (Believe it or not, putting colorful post-it notes on your forehead is part of how you learn!)