Associate Professor of Philosophy
Co-Editor:
Florida Philosophical Review
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Office:
Psychology Building 245
Office Phone:
407-823-2799 E-mail:
michael.strawser@ucf.edu
Office Hours:
Mondays and Wednesdays 2:30 pm to 3:30 pm and by appointment
Current Course
Materials
PHM 3020
Philosophy of Love: Syllabus, Introduction, Singer, Plato’s Symposium,
Phaedrus, Courtly Love in K.
Lavransdatter, Aristotle on Friendship, Spinoza I, Spinoza
II, Tullia
D’Aragona, Kierkegaard
I, Love Through Film?, Kierkegaard II, Ortega y Gasset,
Marion I, Marion II, Gabriel Marcel, Marion III, bell hooks i, hooks ii, Frankfurt, Buber, Chemistry of Love
PHI 2010H
Honors Introduction to Philosophy: Syllabus, Introduction, Arguments, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, etc., Phaedo,
The Allegory of the Cave, The
Clouds, Kierkegaard I, Kierkegaard II, Sartre,
Spinoza I, Spinoza II, Spinoza III, Buddhism, Nietzsche I, Nietzsche II, Nietzsche III, Ethical Vegetarianism, Ayer’s Emotivism, Feminism
News and Awards
UCF
Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award, 2011
NEH
Summer Seminar in Medieval Jewish Philosophy
UCF
Faculty Members Learn from Each Other
Students
Honored for Ethics, National Competition Next
UCF Team Finishes Strong in
Ethics Bowl
Two UCF Teams Placed in
Top Five at Regional Ethics Bowl, November 2009
Philosophy Gets Creative
with Ethics, September 2009
Honors Students Win Debates Over Life's Dilemmas in Regional Ethics Bowl, November 2008
Flagler
College Alumni Professional Achievement Award, 2008.
UCF
Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award, 2007
Recent and Selected
Publications
“On the Specter of Speciesism in Spinoza,” NASS Monograph 15 (North American Spinoza
Society) (2011): 3-30.
“Creative Case Studies in Ethics,” Teaching
Ethics (Fall 2010): 105-119.
“A Place for Forgiveness? A Derridean
Response to Terrorism.” Politics and
Religion in the New Century: Philosophical Reflections. Eds. Philip Quadrio and Carrol Besseling. Sydney
University Press, 2009.
“Forgiving Derrida: From Terrorism to Self-Forgiveness.” Forgiveness:
Probing the Boundaries. Eds. Stephen Bloch-Schulman and David
White. Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2009.
“Assessing
Assessment: Toward a Hermeneutic-Phenomenological Perspective.” InSight: A Scholarly Journal of Teaching 4
(2009): 56-68.
Review of David Reisman’s Sartre’s Phenomenology, Philosophy in Review/Comptes
rendus philosophiques
XXIX, no.3 (June 2009): 216-218.
“H φιλοσοφία
της αγάπης
στους Σπινόζα,
Κίρκεγκωρ
και Σέλερ” [“The Philosophy of Love in Spinoza, Kierkegaard and Scheler”]. Translated by Michalis
Katsimitsis. Celestia 2 (April 2009): 19-28. (A
Greek Journal of Philosophy.)
“Assessment and Experience.” Faculty Focus 8.1 (March
2009): 4-5. (A publication of the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning at
UCF.)
“Looking
for a Common Watermark: Loving Others in Kierkegaard and Levinas.” Despite Oneself: Subjectivity and Its Secret in
Kierkegaard and Levinas. Eds.
Claudia Welz and Karl Verstrynge.
“A Panegyric on Spinoza
and Derrida: Saintly Jewish Heretics Striving Towards a ‘Pure Religion’.”
“The Ethics of
Love in Spinoza and Kierkegaard and the Teleological Suspension of the
Theological.” Philosophy
Today 51.4 (Winter 2007): 438-446.
Review of Sherry Deveaux’s The Role of God in Spinoza’s Metaphysics.
Philosophy in Review/Comptes
rendus philosophiques XXVII,
no.5 (October 2007): 331-333.
Review of Amy Laura Hall’s Kierkegaard
and the Treachery of Love and Joel D.S. Rasmussen’s Between Irony and Witness: Kierkegaard’s Poetics of Faith, Hope, and
Love. Religion and Literature 39.1 (Spring 2007): 132-136.
“Gifts of Silence from Kierkegaard to Derrida.” Soundings 89:1-2 (Spring/Summer 2006): 55-72.
“Creating Philosophy: Using a Cooperative Learning Approach in the
Classroom.” Teaching Philosophy 28:2 (June 2005): 115-134.
Both/And: Reading Kierkegaard from Irony to Edification.
Recent Conference Presentations
“Deliberating on Love and Sin.” Søren
Kierkegaard Society Meeting at the Pacific Meetings of the American
Philosophical Association, San Diego, CA, April 2011.
“The Erotic Ideal in Saadia and Spinoza.”
Florida Philosophical Association 56th Annual Conference. Daytona
Beach, FL, November 6, 2010.
“Toward the Perfect: Putting on the Armor of Love in the Edifying
Discourses.” Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding Discourses:
International Conference in Modern European Thought, University of Oxford, UK,
16-18 April, 2010. (Unable to attend due to Icelandic volcanic ash.)
“Applying Creativity to Research in Ethics,” 2nd Annual Florida
Statewide Symposium: Engagement in Undergraduate Research, University of
Central Florida, Orlando, FL, September 25, 2009.
“Slaughtering Spinoza’s Speciesism with the
Help of Derrida.” Towards a Philosophy of Life: An International Conference in
Continental Philosophy of Religion, Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, UK,
June 27, 2009.
“Is There a Self in Pre-reflective Consciousness?” International
Interdisciplinary Conference on Self, Identity and Culture: East and West,
Kolkata, India, January 6, 2009.
“On the Specter of Speciesism in Spinoza,”
North American Spinoza Society Meeting at the Pacific Meetings of the American
Philosophical Association, Pasadena, CA, March 2008.
“Between Terrorism and Forgiveness: Exploring Derrida’s Post-Secular
Thinking,” First Global Forgiveness Conference, Salzburg, Austria, March 2008.
“A Place for Forgiveness? A Derridean Response
to Terrorism,” Dialogues in Place: Australasian Society for Continental
Philosophy, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, December 2007.
“Striving for Love in Spinoza and Kierkegaard,” Søren
Kierkegaard Society Meeting at the Pacific Meetings of the American
Philosophical Association, San Francisco, California, April 2007.
“Looking for a Common Watermark: Loving Others in Kierkegaard and Levinas,” Kierkegaard and Levinas
Workshop, Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen, Denmark,
February 8, 2007.
Courses Taught
PHI 5627 Theoretical and Applied Ethics
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy
PHI 2010H Honors Introduction to Philosophy
PHI 3083 Research Methods in Philosophy
PHH 3460 Modern Western Philosophy
PHH 3600 Contemporary Philosophy
PHI 3670 Ethical Theory
PHI 3700 Philosophy of Religion
PHM 3020 Philosophy of Love
PHP 3786 Existentialism
PHP 4782 Phenomenology
IDH 3600H Honors Case Studies in Ethics