Shawn Loht Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy   Ph.D. in Philosophy, The Catholic University of America, 2009 M.A. in Philosophy, The Catholic University of America, 2005 B.A. in Liberal Arts, St. Johns College, 2001

Office: Knight Hall 215 Phone: x2798 (478-301-2798) email: loht_sp@mercer.edu

In the course of finishing this work I have become fascinated by what it means for philosophy to have an historical beginning – whether the dawn of philosophy in ancient Greece was occasioned by temporal factors such as geographic movements of peoples and the secularization of Greek culture; or whether philosophy arose due to the eventuation of Being to the human; and if so, what was the interactivity between Being and the human thinker?

Some of the philosophers I am most interested in are Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger.  More broadly I am interested in Ancient Greek and German Philosophy, Political Philosophy and Ethics, and Phenomenology.  I come from a great books background so I advocate grappling with primary historical texts as a baseline for any philosophical work.

I also have interests in the philosophy of film, the philosophy of love and sex, and the dialogue between classical political philosophy, urban planning and design, and architecture (what I like to refer to as the intersection of philosophy and community).

Courses:

In my past teaching experiences I’ve taught Introduction to Philosophy, Ethics, Logic and Critical Thinking, and focused general education courses on classical thought and modern thought.  This year my courses include: Introduction to Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Ethics, A Great Ancient Philosopher: Plato.