Instructor

Jon Miller
E-mail: jon.miller@queensu.ca
Phone: 613-533-6000 ext. 77041

Message from the Instructor

Welcome to Philosophy 111! I am pleased that you have signed up for the course, and I hope you will get as much out of taking it as I will teaching it.

Before the course gets started, I wanted to tell you a little about myself. Educationally, I earned my PhD from the University of Toronto. I have taught at several universities, including the University of Toronto, the University of Minnesota, Uppsala University (Sweden) and of course Queen’s. As I tell my students here, out of all the places where I have taught, Queen’s students are on average the best of the lot.

My research interests make me well-suited to teach PHIL 111, as I specialise in the history of philosophy. My main guy is Spinoza, the Dutch-Jewish philosopher who died in 1677. I am also very interested in the ancient Stoics, a school which flourished from the 3^rd century B.C. to the 2^nd century A.D. We won’t directly encounter either of these parties in our course but we will read works of some of their peers, including Plato, Aristotle and Descartes.

Outside the classroom, I am lucky to be the father of three children – Magnolia (aged 8), Gus (4) and Poppy (2). My website is hopelessly out of date but if you’re interested, you’ll find pictures of Magnolia and Gus there (I still need to post some of Poppy).

Course mechanics will be explain in the first lecture, so any questions you might have about marking or deadlines should be answered at the time. If there are specific matters that you want to raise with me in the meantime, however, you are welcome to contact me by email.

Again, I want to thank you for your interest in this course. I look forward to getting to know you over the year ahead.

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More information:

• Computer Requirements and Internet Access
• Moodle, Our Online Learning Environment 
• Academic Integrity
• Evaluation
• Suggested Time Commitment
• Required Material