Fall 2025 has been a remarkably fruitful teaching season. I taught a First-Year Seminar on “Free Will and Responsibility” for the first time, with fifteen excellent first-year students. I also co-taught “Introduction to Buddhism” for the second time, which surveyed Buddhist thought from ancient India through all major historical and modern branches across different countries, regions, and continents. Most importantly, I taught “Foundations of Morality” for the third time, enrolling nineteen students.

The first half of “Foundations of Morality” is theoretical, covering major Western ethical traditions, including Aristotelian virtue ethics, Stoicism, medieval Christian ethics, Kantian deontology, Mill’s utilitarianism, and existentialism, as well as foundational elements of Buddhist and Confucian (Ruist) ethics. The second half of the course is entirely practical. I used Dr. Elliot Cohen’s The New Rational Therapy: Thinking Your Way to Serenity, Success, and Profound Happiness (Jason Aronson, 2006) and the framework of Logic-Based Therapy (LBT)—a philosophically sophisticated form of cognitive behavioral therapy—to apply ethical theory to practical questions of the good life, such as how to address self-defeating emotions and behaviors.

Throughout the semester, I experimented with a variety of hands-on, in-class practices, including contemplative listening, silent quiet-sitting meditation, ethical case studies, assignments involving the creation of fictional “cults,” and simulated philosophical counseling sessions. The final project required students to develop their own case using anonymous, fictional, or publicly known figures, and then apply philosophical and religious resources to address the case by following the structured method of LBT.

I am proud of the students’ final projects, and several stand out as particularly strong examples:

Isabella M. Sorhegui analyzes the case of Nick Kyrgios, a well-known professional tennis player. Her careful and nuanced use of Buddhist resources is especially admirable.

John Colby Andrews takes up the video game Skull Kid, beginning with humorous and satirical critiques of moralistic teaching and later developing a thoughtful and well-supported engagement with Confucian wisdom.

Chase Corley analyzes the case of Kevin Love, a prominent NBA player. As a student-athlete himself, Chase demonstrates a strong sensitivity to the psychological dimensions of athletic life and shows real potential as a future coach.

Kayla Noyala approached the project with exceptional seriousness. She conducted an interview with an anonymous family member and offered well-grounded and thoughtful philosophical guidance.

Stefanos L. Georgiou wrote a fictional case centered on a student football player and delivered a very strong final presentation. He took seriously the feedback I offered on his two earlier case-study essays and worked diligently to revise both his thinking and his writing style. The final presentation is detailed, well-balanced, and something of which I am very proud:

Daniel Poitevin’s role-play project is particularly impressive. He alternated between the roles of therapist and counselee with clarity, insight, and philosophical depth.

At a broader level, I advocate an integrated approach to mental health and the good life. In areas of human life where free will and responsibility continue to play a meaningful role, philosophy—and the humanities more generally—can and should make substantial contributions to healthy living. However, when psychological conditions are rooted primarily in physiology and free will plays little or no role, the traditional doctor–patient medical model of mental health must still be employed. This integrated framework underlies my approach to philosophical counseling in this course. By teaching it within a public liberal arts classroom, and in a manner appropriate to that setting, I also aim to experiment with ways of teaching “self-cultivation” inspired by the Confucian (Ruist) tradition.