Faculty & Staff

Rebecca Copenhaver, associate professor

J. M. Fritzman, associate professor and chair

Jay Odenbaugh, assistant professor

Joel A. Martinez, assistant professor

Nicholas D. Smith, professor

Clayton Morgareidge, professor emeritus

William A. Rottschaefer, professor emeritus

Click here to see our home, the J. R. Howard Hall

Click here to see the faculty, circa 1988

Clayton Morgareidge, William A. Rottschaefer, John Harrington (the department's founder), and Sevin Koont.

Click here to see a picture of Rena J. Ratte, professor during the late 1960s and early 1970s

The Rena J. Ratte Award -- the College's highest academic honor, awarded each year to a graduating senior -- is named after her.

Rebecca Copenhaver, associate professor

Contact at rebeccac@lclark.edu, 503-768-7441, or Howard 231.

"In teaching philosophy, I encourage people to love the power of their own minds. The mind, like the body, must be exercised and exercised through work. Philosophy is the most extreme of extreme sports."

Dr. Copenhaver graduated with a Ph.D. in philosophy from Cornell University in 2002. Her dissertation was on The Doors of Perception: Direct Realism and Anti-Sensationalism in Reid and Kant. She has research interests in Early Modern Philosophy, Kant, Reid, and Philosophy of Mind. In 2002, she attended an NEH Summer Institute on "Consciousness and Intentionality." Dr. Copenhaver has published articles in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, the Proceedings of the Ninth International Kant Congress, and Reid Studies.

J. M. Fritzman, associate professor and department chair

Contact at fritzman@lclark.edu, 503-768-7477, or Howard 223.

"Philosophy is always one generation from dying. Students allow philosophy to continue. For that, we teachers of philosophy owe them an unrepayable and immeasurable debt of gratitude. Studying philosophy is never easy. It is, however, usually pleasant. Teaching philosophy is always a joy."

Dr. Fritzman graduated with a Ph.D. in philosophy from Purdue University in 1991. He has research interests in 19th & 20th Century Continental Philosophy, Social & Political Philosophy, Feminist Theory, and Aesthetics. He has published articles in American Philosophical Quarterly, Clio, Continental Philosophy Review, Educational Theory, Idealistic Studies, International Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Forum, Praxis International, and Rhetorica.

Jay Odenbaugh, assistant professor

Contact at jay@lclark.edu, 503-768-7377, or Howard 230.

"Philosophy in its best moments is about instilling intellectual accountability. As William James noted, 'a great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices.' To understand our beliefs and values is important not only for intellectual reasons but for deeply practical reasons. Beliefs and values have effects -- some beneficial and some not. It thus is of profound importance to be responsible for one's view of the world and my teaching is first and foremost an attempt to bring students to understand and respect that responsibility."

Dr. Odenbaugh graduated with a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Calgary in 2001. His dissertation was on Searching for Patterns, Hunting for Causes: A Philosophical Examination of Mathematical Modeling in Theoretical Ecology. His research interests include Philosophy of Biology (especially ecology and evolution), Philosophy of Science, and Environmental Ethics. He has published articles in Philosophy of Science and Environmental Values. Besides philosophy, he enjoys rock climbing, hiking, and playing with his dog.

Joel A. Martinez, assistant professor

Contact at joel@lclark.edu, 503-768-7735, or Howard 232.

"My aim in teaching is to express to the students how puzzling and interesting the everyday world is. We talk about morality, the external world, social institutions and other minds every day. However, philosophical reflection shows us that when we use these everyday ideas we do so in ways that are loaded with assumptions and involve commitments or implications we do not always notice. Philosophy is practical, important, and also just plain interesting."

Dr. Martinez graduated with a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Arizona in 2006. His dissertation (/Livability, Education and the Aims of Moral Theory)/ argued that philosophers interested in ethics can and should take moral education to be a central aim of moral theorizing. His interests include Virtue Ethics, 19th Century Philosophy (particularly the development of Utilitarianism), and the Philosophy of Education.

Nicholas D. Smith, professor

Contact at ndsmith@lclark.edu, 503-768-7478, or Howard 229.

"My goal in every class I teach is to try to infect my students with the same fascination and passion for philosophy and the classics that I have always felt for them. Teaching, for me, is an attempt to share my love for these subjects."

Professor Smith is the James F. Miller Professor of Humanities. Prior to 1999, he taught at Virginia Tech, the University of Hong Kong, and Michigan State University. He received his BA (High Honors) from the University of Rochester in 1971, and his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1975. He is author, co-author, editor or co-editor of over 15 books, including Plato's Socrates (with T. C. Brickhouse), which won the "Outstanding Academic Book for 1994" award from Choice. He is also the author of more than 80 journal, encyclopedia, or dictionary articles, reviews, and translations, including three of the translations of works by Plato and Pseudo-Plato that appear in the new Plato: Complete Works from Hackett. In 1985, Smith won the American Philological Association Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Classics.

Clayton Morgareidge, professor emeritus

Contact at clayton@lclark.edu.

"My aim in teaching is to find ways to ensnare the minds of students in the endlessly rewarding pathways of philosophical perplexity. Philosophy is a life-long journey in which confusion and enlightenment are constantly succeeding each other, with each moment of enlightenment outshining the one before it."

Dr. Morgareidge came to Lewis & Clark College in 1965 with a new Ph.D. from Duke University. In his early years, he taught logic, metaphysics, and philosophy of science, as well as courses in Wittgenstein and the history of modern & contemporary philosophy. In the early 1970s, inspired by the events and social movements of the times, he turned to social & political philosophy, especially Marxism. In more recent years, he concentrated on issues in ethics and moral psychology, writing and teaching on such topics as free will and punishment. Combining business with pleasure, he led overseas programs to Italy, Argentina, Ecuador, and Scotland. Dr. Morgareidge retired after the 2001 fall semester. Besides books, he enjoys cycling, cooking, gardening, and travel.

William A. Rottschaefer, professor emeritus

Contact at rotts@lclark.edu, 503-768-7479, or Howard 227.

"My goal in teaching is that my students leave class each day with a greater love and understanding of the Real, the One, the True, and the Beautiful."

Professor Rottschaefer earned a BA in the Classics and Philosophy with honors from St. Louis University. He then received an MA in philosophy also from St. Louis University writing his master's thesis on "The Object of the Intellect in St. Thomas' Commentary on Peter Lombard's Book of the Sentences." After teaching Latin and Mathematics in a high school for three years, he obtained a Licentiate in Sacred Theology, from St. Louis University. He then acquired a MS in physics from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Finally, he earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Boston University, writing his dissertation on "Ordinary Knowledge in the Scientific Realism of Wilfrid Sellars," under the direction of Abner Shimony.

His research has focused on the topics in philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, epistemology, metaphysics, the biological and psychological bases of moral agency, and the epistemic relationships between science and religion. He has published in a number of journals including Philosophy of Science, Biology and Philosophy, Behavior and Philosophy, The Journal of Consciousness Studies, The Southern Journal of Philosophy and Zygon. Cambridge University Press published his book, The Biology and Psychology of Moral Agency.

Professor Rottschaefer was named the teacher of the year in 2002. He retired after the 2003 spring semester.