Philosophy and Critical Thinking: Ongoing Weekly (13-18 Teens)

Each week I will present on a unique philosophical topic and then have the students discuss the topic of the week. We will cover topics including current events, logic, ethics, history of philosophy, debate, fallacies, and more. My primary teaching method uses PowerPoint slides along with questions meant to encourage engagement from the students. I also ask that the students come up with their own arguments in order to practice using logic to be convincing. I am open to any suggestions from students regarding the topic that we will discuss each week. Here is what the current schedule looks like:

NOTE: MY CLASS ON MONDAYS AT 12:00PM EST IS AHEAD OF THE OTHERS. IN THIS SECTION, JOHN LOCKE WAS TAUGHT ON DECEMBER 16 2024, AND PROCEEDS FROM THERE. 

Week of December 22: Pre-Socratic Philosophy (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes) 
Week of December 29: Heraclitus (Flux and Opposition)
Week of January 5: Parmenides & Zeno 
Week of January 12:  Diotima, Aspasia, and Hipparchia 
Week of January 19:  Socrates (Intro) 
Week of January 26: Socrates/Plato (The Apology)
Week of February 2: Plato's Forms & Republic (Allegory of the Cave) 
Week of February 9: Aristotle's Virtue Ethics 
Week of February 16: Aristotle's Four Causes and Other Insights
Week of February 23: Epicurus's Hedonism 
Week of March 2: Pyrrhonian Skepticism
Week of March 9: Ancient Stoicism 
Week of March 16: Francis Bacon (Science and Theory of the Idols)
Week of March 23: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan)
Week of March 30: John Locke (Liberalism)
Week of April 6: Mary Wollstonecraft (Feminism)
Week of April 13: Rene Descartes (Mind-Body Problem)
Week of April 20: More Descartes and Intro to Hume
Week of April 27: David Hume 
Week of May 4: Benedict de Spinoza 
Week of May 11: Immanuel Kant 
Week of May 18: G.W.F. Hegel
Week of May 25: Karl Marx 
Week of June 1: Jeremy Bentham & J.S. Mill (Utilitarianism)
Week of June 8: Arthur Schopenhauer (Pessimism) 
Week of June 15: Friedrich Nietzsche (Optimism) 
Week of June 22: Bertrand Russell 
Week of June 29: Ludwig Wittgenstein 
Week of July 6: Martin Heidegger (Authenticity & Being)
Week of July 13: Hannah Arendt (Banality of Evil, Justice)
Week of July 20:  John Rawls (Theory of Justice as Fairness) 
Week of July 27: Henri Bergson (Time and Free Will)
Week of August 3: Gilles Deleuze (Difference) 
Week of August 10: William James (Pragmatism)
Week of August 17: W.E.B Du Bois (Double Consciousness and Racism)
Week of August 24: Simone de Beauvoir (Existentialism) 
Week of August 31: Albert Camus (Absurdity & the Myth of Sisyphus)
Week of September 7: Ralph Waldo Emerson (Transcendentalism & Individualism 
Week of September 14: Judith Butler (Gender and The Force of Nonviolence) 
Week of September 21: Alan Turing and John Searle on AI 
Week of September 28: Jacques Derrida (Presence) 
Week of October 5: Judith Jarvis Thomson (Ethics and the Trolley Problem) 
Week of October 12: Robert Nozick (Experience Machine & Criticism of Hedonism) 
Week of October 19: Noam Chomsky (Linguistics and Anarcho-Syndicalism) 
Week of October 26: Daniel Dennet (Free Will & Chmess)