616-331-3257
616-331-3257
agora.phi.gvsu.edu
Tue & Thur 10:00–11:15 am at B-3-200 Mackinac Hall,
and by arrangement
— WINTER 2017 —
LIB 100: Reflect, Connect, Engage
Sec. 05: T&Th 11:30–12:45 pm
ENS 401: Environmental Problem Solving (Capstone)
Sec. 01: Wed 6:00–8:50pm
Many recent courses are preserved on a Moodle server. Login as "Guest" to view them.
PHI
101: Introduction to Philosophy [Fall 2013]
PHI
220: Aesthetics [Fall 2014]
LIB
100: Introduction to Liberal Education [Winter 2014]
LIB
495: Senior Seminar (Capstone) [Winter 2013]
ENS
401: Environmental Problem Solving ENS Capstone [Winter 2014]
PHI
495: Reality, Knowledge and Value Philosophy Capstone [Fall 2010]
PHI
230: American Philosophy [Fall 2009]
PHI
376: Community Working Classics Ecological Literacy and
Sustainability [Winter 2008]
The most recent syllabus is available for older courses.
LIB 330: The Idea of Nature
PHI 102: Ethics
PHI 304: Recent Great Philosophers
PHI 325: Ethics in Professional Life
PHI 335: Philosophy and Democracy
PHI 380: Environmental Philosophy (Special Topics)
The work of the classical American pragmatists and their circle is a rich philosophical resource for our own age. Charles S. Peirce, William James, Josiah Royce, John Dewey, Jane Addams, Alain Locke, George Santayana, and Alfred North Whitehead are among this distinctive group of late 19th and early 20th century philosophers. They emphasize process, historical context, purposiveness, and evolution in our understanding of the world.
The ancients sought a philosophy of beauty; we moderns and post-moderns are looking for a philosophy of art. Pragmatism and semeiotics offer a promising framework for understanding the place of art and our ways of evaluating it.
Environmentalists need philosophical guidance; philosophy needs environmental guidance. Environmental pragmatism offers an emphasis on civic philosophical engagement, offers ways to re-think our responsibilities to future generations and the non-human world, and suggests that a much greater awareness of historical and physical embodiment is needed in philosophy more generally.
In order to understand the way forward to living sustainably on the planet, we need to draw on all pertinent knowledge about humans' relations to their environments. Science, economics and politics, and the arts and humanities are all relevant to figuring things out. My approach to environmental studies puts the knowledge and skills of liberal education, and especially philosophy, at the center of these efforts.
BOOKS
The Relevance of Royce (2014)
ed. with Jason Bell
Josiah Royce for the Twenty-first Century (2012)
ed. with Krzysztof Piotr Skowronski
Teaching Sustainability / Teaching Sustainably (2012)
ed. with Kirsten Allen Bartels
The Continuity of Peirce's Thought (1998)
PAPERS, NOTES, AND SUNDRY ITEMS
Josiah
Royce: article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Ousiology:
blogging Aristotle's Metaphysics (Summer
2009).
Thargelion:
a slideshow of my scanned reading notes on
Plato's Gorgias (Summer 2007). 42 pages.
Once in the slideshow, click on the page image to enlarge.
noemata: a
slideshow of my scanned reading notes on Husserl and
Merleau-Ponty (Winter 2006). 44 pages. Click on
the page image to enlarge.
New
Diagram of Semeiotic Process An animated
illustration of signs in action!
Sources in American Philosophy: A Rough and Ready
Research Bibliography for PHI 230
The
Spirit of Two Communities: Charles S. Peirce and
Josiah Royce on Scientific and Religious
Community. American Academy of Religion
(2001).
Notes on Open Source in
Education, from Kalamazoo Linux Users Group
Presentation (May 2001).
Open Sources and the Open
Society: An Essay in Politics and
Technology. Computer Scientists for Social
Responsibility (May-June 2000).
Notes on
Environmental Pragmatism. SAAP Summer Institute
on Pragmatism, Burlington, VT (July
1999).
Charles S. Peirce
on Esthetics and Ethics: A Bibliography. Online
publication (1999).
The Ascent of Soul to
Nous: Charles S. Peirce as
Neoplatonist. International Society for
Neoplatonic Studies (1995).
Joseph Brent's Peirce:
The Question of Ethics. Society for the
Advancement of American Philosophy
(1994).
Public Hearings /
Hearing Publics: A Pragmatic Approach to Applying
Ethics. Society for the Advancement of American
Philosophy (1993).
Dissertation
Abstract: The Principle of Continuity in Charles
S. Peirce's Phenomenology and Semeiotic. Vanderbilt
University. (1992)
My office is in Mackinac Hall on the GVSU Allendale campus, though my teaching and office hours are often elsewhere. Please contact me to be sure we both know where we're meeting.
Department of Philoosphy
B3-200 Mackinac Hall
Grand Valley State University
Allendale, Michigan, 49401 USA
(office) 616-331-3257 (dept.) 616-331-2114
parkerk@gvsu.edu
