Teaching
Teaching has been central to my academic life for more than four decades. I approach philosophy as a discipline learned through sustained argument and close engagement with texts. In the classroom, an idea must withstand scrutiny. Students come away understanding how an argument is constructed, where its force lies, and what follows from accepting it.
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My courses are organized around philosophical problems and the texts and arguments through which they have been pursued. Each course develops a distinct field of inquiry while remaining connected to a broader comparative approach that places traditions, concepts, and methods within their intellectual contexts.
This course introduces its principal problems and methods while developing the skills required to read arguments closely, clarify concepts, and defend a position through reason. Students encounter philosophy as an intellectual discipline whose questions extend from the nature of reality and knowledge to the choices by which human beings orient their lives.
The course follows philosophical thought from antiquity through the medieval and modern periods into contemporary philosophy. Its organizing principle is not chronology alone, but the transformation of problems as they pass from one intellectual world to another. Philosophical systems are therefore read both in their historical setting and in relation to the arguments they inherited, revised, or rejected.
Comparative philosophy requires traditions to be understood before they are compared. Each is reconstructed within the language and historical conditions that shaped its conceptual framework, without assuming in advance that its categories correspond to those of another tradition. Comparison then becomes a way of identifying genuine convergence while also determining where translation conceals important philosophical differences.
Political philosophy asks what makes power legitimate and what limits can justifiably be placed upon it. The course examines the philosophical foundations of the state and follows their expression in institutions, forms of government, and political regimes. Classical and modern texts are read with attention to the underlying conceptions of human nature and social order on which their political arguments depend.
At the center of this course lies the difficult relation between philosophical reason and claims grounded in religious or mystical experience. Questions concerning divine existence, freedom, evil, and the limits of knowledge are examined across traditions that do not always recognize the same standards of authority or explanation. Their differences are treated philosophically without forcing them into an artificial conceptual equivalence.
Mexican philosophy is approached as an intellectual tradition with a history and conceptual development of its own. The course begins with Nahua and Maya thought, confronts the rupture produced by colonization, and follows philosophical reflection into modern and contemporary Mexico. Its central concern is how ideas endure through radical historical change, how translation transforms them, and how Mexican thinkers have interpreted the world from within their own cultural experience.
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Selected lectures from my university teaching and published course materials. Each examines a single philosophical problem in depth, within the historical and comparative framework that runs through my courses.
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Selected videos exploring philosophical problems, methods, and concepts. Each focuses on a single question or idea, offering a concise introduction while connecting it to the broader traditions of philosophical thought.
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Volumes developed for university teaching and independent study, each connected to the courses and philosophical fields it serves most directly.
Designed as a core text for college-level Introduction to Philosophy courses, combining the study of major philosophical problems with philosophical methods, fundamental categories, and the analysis of consciousness, matter, space, time, and freedom.
The Secret Codes of the MindFor courses in Ancient Greek philosophy, Western philosophy, and the history of philosophy, tracing the development of Greek thought from the Pre-Socratics through Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic schools.
The Secret Codes of the Mind: Ancient Greek PhilosophyFor the study of Indian, Chinese, and Japanese philosophy, examining how different traditions approach consciousness, knowledge, reality, liberation, moral cultivation, and the problem of human transformation.
The Secret Codes of the Mind: Eastern PhilosophyFor courses in medieval philosophy, philosophy of religion, Western philosophy, and the history of philosophy, examining Christian, Islamic, and Jewish approaches to reason, revelation, freedom, and mystical knowledge.
The Secret Codes of the Mind: From Medieval Philosophy to the Enlightenment, Part OneFor courses in early modern philosophy, epistemology, political philosophy, and the history of philosophy, following the debates over certainty, experience, human nature, and the foundations of political authority.
The Secret Codes of the Mind: From Medieval Philosophy to the Enlightenment. Part TwoFor courses in Enlightenment philosophy, political philosophy, and the history of ideas, examining eighteenth-century debates over reason, freedom, law, and social order alongside the ethical and philosophical principles of Freemasonry.
The Secret Codes of the Mind: From Medieval Philosophy to the Enlightenment, Part ThreeA systematic course text in political philosophy that approaches the state as an architecture of authority. Students compare political orders by examining how legitimacy and institutional design interact with economic structures, religion, and the protection of rights.
In Search of the Perfect StateBuilt around the contrast between monarchy and republican government, this volume examines the institutional arrangements through which political power takes form and is restrained. It is especially suited to courses in comparative politics and political philosophy concerned with sovereignty, constitutional government, and the relationship between authority and liberty.
Forms of Government: Monarchy, Democracy, and the Architecture of PowerThis volume turns from forms of government to the logic of political regimes. It compares democracy, authoritarianism, and totalitarian rule through the organization of power and the role of institutions, tracing the changing boundaries of political freedom.
Political Regimes: Democracy, Authoritarianism, and Totalitarian Rule — Volume IA comprehensive course text tracing Mexican philosophy from Nahua and Maya traditions through the colonial rupture to modern and contemporary thought. It attends especially to the survival and transformation of concepts across historical change, and to how language, translation, and cultural experience shape philosophical ideas.
Mexican PhilosophyOrganized around sixteen methods of philosophical inquiry, this volume shows how each approach changes the way a problem is understood and examined. Designed for courses in philosophical methodology and applied philosophy, it connects disciplined analysis with questions that arise in judgment, interpretation, and the conduct of life.
Philosophical MethodsThis study traces the meeting of philosophical reasoning and Jewish mystical thought, from fundamental questions of creation and divine unity to later Kabbalistic conceptions of the infinite, exile, and human responsibility. It is suited to courses in Jewish philosophy, philosophy of religion, and the comparative study of mystical traditions.
Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah05
My academic career has included university teaching, institutional leadership, curriculum development, and the organization of academic programs.
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Invited lectures and guest teaching carry my academic work to new audiences and different settings, where philosophical questions can be explored afresh.
Guest Lecturer · Orange Coast College · September 30, 2026 · Costa Mesa, California