Rick Schubert: Philosophy's crouching tiger

Ever since philosophy professor Rick Schubert was in high school, he has had a profound passion for philosophy.

While furthering his studies, Schubert also developed an enthusiasm for martial arts.

Now a professor at Cosumnes River College, Schubert strives to bring others to share his appreciation for philosophy and martial arts.

"I have had a desire to teach philosophy ever since I can remember. My belief that philosophy and martial arts coincide was developed after I started to study martial arts," said Schubert.

In 1991, Schubert came to California to attend the University of California, Davis and received his Ph.D. in 1999.

While pursuing his education, Schubert received numerous fellowships. Schubert said that a fellowship is similar to a scholarship except that a scholarship usually only pays for school and a fellowship gives you enough money to pay for school as well as living expenses.

The fellowships he received were the Elizabeth P. Wood Fellowship, which he won in 1993-1994 and again in 1997-1999. He also received fellowships from UC Davis and the University of Connecticut in 1986-1991.

"Living well requires balance, and studying philosophy is mental muscle building," said Schubert.

Although philosophy is what he teaches at CRC, he leaves room in his schedule to teach martial arts at UC Davis. He says that he incorporates philosophy in his martial arts classes and vice versa.

"I believe that it is possible to train the mind by training the body, and train the body by training the mind," said Schubert.

He received his black belt in martial arts in 1984 and began teaching at UC Davis in the fall of 1995, he has been teaching it ever since.

Schubert specializes in ethics and moral philosophy. He teaches introduction to western philosophy, introduction to eastern philosophy and a critical thinking and logic class.

Since he began teaching at CRC, Schubert has tried to have an impact on his department, the faculty and his students.

"My long term goal is to foster as much appreciation for philosophy studies as I have. I would like for faculty, students and staff to have my sense of enthusiasm for the study of philosophy," said Schubert.

Within the past year Schubert has served his department, college and community in a lot of ways.

Among those ways are collaborating with CRC librarians to continue expanding our library's holdings in philosophy and going through our library's current holdings and removing materials that are out of date or inappropriate.

"What I have been doing over the years since I have been here is making suggestions for new philosophical reference materials, like our new Rutledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy and The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy," said Schubert.

Another way he has tried to influence CRC is that he has been trying to establish logic tutors.

"We currently don't have any logic tutors. We have had one every other semester, and so it is my hope that I will be able to re-establish a tutoring program for future semesters," said Schubert.

Schubert says he hopes that if a person were to visit one of his classes like Intro to Western Philosophy, he hopes that they would leave understanding "the study of philosophy is of practical importance."

"As a professor, I think he does a good job explaining the material and he tries to make it interesting," said a student of Schubert's Western philosophy class, Dighton Azpeitia.

Schubert says that he hopes that by the end of his teaching career everyone will have taken an interest in philosophy.