Kathy Fazekas Englehardt

Teaching

At Coastal Carolina University, the courses I teach are Business Ethics, Introduction to Logic, Introduction to Ethics, and Introduction to Philosophy. In my previous positions at the University of Connecticut and Willamette University, other courses I taught were Metaphysics; Non-Western and Comparative Philosophy; Special Topics: Identity, Time, and Death; Philosophy of Time; and Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights.

Courses Taught

Business Ethics

In this class, we begin with a brief overview of some key ethical theories then proceed to examine several ethical issues that arise during the course of doing business. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) whistle-blowing; leadership; corporate responsibility; exploitation; workers' rights; advertising, marketing, and sales; product liability and consumer safety; government regulation; and how one's work relates to living a good life.

Introduction to Logic

In this course, we begin by examining some basics of arguments, including argument structure; deductive versus inductive arguments; assessing arguments for validity, soundness, strength, and weakness; argument forms; and coming up with counterexamples. Next, students learn to translate English sentences into propositional logic, determine the truth value of compound propositions based on the truth values of their parts, and interpret and construct truth tables for propositions and arguments. Finally, students learn how to use natural deduction to prove the validity of arguments and students learn to recognize fallacies and to avoid committing them.

Introduction to Ethics

This course introduces students to key normative theories in the western philosophical tradition and then examines some criticism of this canon. It also introduces students to some issues in applied ethics, such as abortion, animal rights, cloning, euthanasia, justice, and war.

Introduction to Philosophy

This course introduces students to some core philosophical problems from various subfields of philosophy, including metaphysics, philosophy of mind, ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of religion. Topics between which I rotate are free will, personal identity, the existence of God and the rationality of faith, justification for government authority, the nature of consciousness, and competing normative theories.

Non-Western and Comparative Philosophy

This course compares traditional texts in South and East Asian philosophy, such as the Dhammapada, Upanishads, Analects, Daodejing, and Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, to western texts, such as Nichomachean Ethics and John Perry's A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality, and to the work of African philosophers such as Ifeanyi Menkiti, Kwame Gyekye, and Bernard Matolino. I have taught this course both as a survey of various topics in metaphysics and ethics and as a more focused study on the specific topics of personal identity and life after death.

Metaphysics

This course surveys various topics in metaphysics, including time, personal identity, free will, the existence of God, and whether the external world exists.

Philosophy of Time

This course begins with an overview and comparison of the primary views on the nature of time, then proceeds to examine how these competing views handle issues such as whether time passes, implications of the Special Theory of Relativity, temporal experience, and time travel.

Special Topics: Identity, Time, and Death

The overarching goal of this course is to examine whether a person can survive bodily death. To this end, we first look at theories of personal identity and persistence. Then, we look at the metaphysics of death—What is death? What is it for a person to die? This latter portion of the course also involves an examination of the metaphysics of life, since death is often understood as the ceasing of life.

Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights

The first part of this course focuses on the nature of rights and on whether the existence of rights imposes duties on others (individuals or institutions). The second part explores historical and contemporary theories of the basis for human rights. The third part examines skepticism toward human rights being moral rights (as opposed to being matters of legal or political convention).