{"id":6804,"date":"2021-11-29T09:51:33","date_gmt":"2021-11-29T14:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/?p=6804"},"modified":"2021-12-06T17:07:12","modified_gmt":"2021-12-06T22:07:12","slug":"the-everyday-philosopher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/issues\/fall-2021\/the-everyday-philosopher\/","title":{"rendered":"The Everyday Philosopher"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Assistant Professor of Philosophy Douglass Reed<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For assistant professor Douglass Reed \u201904, philosophy goes beyond reading Plato\u2019s Symposium<\/em> or discussing Socratic virtue in a classroom. Instead, Reed sees philosophy as something that can be, and often is, done every day. And that\u2019s how he teaches it. \u201cI think we, as humans, are always kind of doing philosophy,\u201d he says. \u201cPhilosophy comes down to asking human questions, explaining our own answers to those questions, and listening to and scrutinizing other people\u2019s answers to those same questions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Reed, philosophy is about being curious and questioning long-held\u2014or even short-held\u2014beliefs and asking the question: Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reed teaches a variety of courses, one of which, Philosophy 110G: Love and Sex (PHL110G), aims to make the field relevant to students by linking it to two very relatable human experiences. \u201cIt\u2019s not always clear to students how philosophy relates to their lives. You hear all these great names, these great thinkers, and you might think, \u2018Why should I care about that?\u2019\u201d Reed says. \u201cA lot of times, students will be able to see the connections to their own experiences, and this class draws on their own personal experiences, which is really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Olivia Belitsos \u201923, a double major in psychology and criminology and criminal justice with a minor in gender and women’s studies, took PHL110G-Honors with Reed as a first-year student and wound up tacking on philosophy as a third major because she enjoyed the way Reed taught it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was really engaging,\u201d Belitsos says. \u201cComing into college, topics like love and sex are a part of everybody\u2019s lives, so it was really relevant. It\u2019s unique material and the way he approached it was thoughtful and captivating.\u201d
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In the course, Reed encourages students to pose questions like, \u201cDoes love at first sight exist?\u201d and \u201cWhat (if anything) is the value of marriage?\u201d and then grapple with either side of the argument. \u201cThe answers to these questions are not straightforward, uncontestable,\u201d he says. \u201cThese kinds of questions are part of our everyday lives, and I hope that philosophy can help us think about them, and other questions, in a more self-conscious way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Belitsos says Reed is succeeding in this goal. \u201cInstead of just teaching us about philosophy, he helps us engage in it,\u201d she says. \u201cI would 100 percent encourage students to take a class with Professor Reed, because he is a phenomenal teacher, and he takes philosophy from being an unapproachable topic to something that everyone can do.\u201d \u2022
\u2014Grace Kelly<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For assistant professor Douglass Reed \u201904, philosophy goes beyond reading Plato\u2019s Symposium or discussing Socratic virtue in a classroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":7061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[304],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fall-2021","architecture-why-i-teach"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6804"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7243,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6804\/revisions\/7243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}