Freshman class

City on the hill

Charles Onyango-Oduke, S.J., assistant professor of philosophy

PhD, Boston College

Representative publication: "Listening to Voices Outside our Gate," Antioch Agenda: Essays on the Restorative Church in Honor of Orlando E. Costas (ISPCK & ANTS), 2007

I am interested in exploring new pedagogies for teaching philosophy. My philosophical outlook has been shaped by my Luo-Kenyan-African heritage and by formal training in both Western philosophy and Indian philosophical traditions. That background has led to courses on hermeneutics, African philosophy, and the dialectic of our polymorphic consciousness. For the last three years, I also have been collaborating on the research, planning, and development of Jesuit higher education in Africa.

My academic research focuses on "cosmopolis"—a concept of the self-critical-reflective dimension of a culture, developed by philosopher, theologian, and economist Bernard Lonergan, S.J., which I trace to classical antiquity, specifically to Diogenes of Sinope—and its connection to the ideals of the Stoics, global citizenship, and the common aspirations of any human society.