Greg Tropea (Ph.D. Syracuse University) I began thinking seriously about philosophical issues in high school, when I was reading Plato, Aristotle, and Ayn Rand. The question of how to know what is the right thing to do gradually shifted its emphasis from doing to knowing as I began to realize that consciousness itself was an issue. The fusion of art, religion, and philosophy in the writing of Hermann Hesse changed everything, and soon I was studying in Germany and writing music to explore philosophical and spiritual issues. Came back to the States to work for an end to the Vietnam war and do a year-long internship on a locked ward at a mental hospital, both which exposed me to varieties of insanity. Wondering if studying properties of language would make consciousness itself any more accessible, I did graduate work in linguistics. Nope. Shifting my focus to religion led me to Martin Heidegger and eventually to Taiwan, where I used the study of tai chi to work on how body and consciousness relate. I was doing independent database consulting in New York when I decided to try a year of teaching in Chico. That was 1986. Since coming to Chico, I have been involved in local arts and politics and have focused on critical thinking, practical philosophy, quality assurance, the organized labor movement, and--after forty years of exploration--on how participation in the construction of consciousness and culture through the arts can inform our sense of what is the right thing to do.
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