Chandler D. Rogers, Ph.D.

My research focuses on understanding the human place in nature in relation to God and creatures. This includes reference to contemporary questions concerning the nature of the human animal, and the ethical status of other animals and our shared environments, in environmental philosophy. It also includes classical questions concerning ontology, the philosophy of nature, and ethics. 19th Century Philosophy and Phenomenology have offered illuminating lenses through which to address these kinds of questions from within the modern cosmological context. Currently I am working on parallel research projects: one on the 19th Century philosopher F.W.J. Schelling, centering on the productive tension between intellectualism and voluntarism which informs key developments in his thought; and one on tensions between individualistic biases and holistic counterbalances in contemporary environmental ethics.

This semester (Fall 2025) I will be teaching Environmental Ethics for the first time, orienting the course around the questions that are motivating my research (especially concerning tensions between individualism and holism in American life and thought, and how these have informed environmental thought and practice) These interests developed directly out of my teaching, especially in discussions with students over the past three years in both my Reasoning and Philosophy of Human Nature courses. They also connect with and build upon my previous research. My book, Merleau-Ponty and the Human-Animal Relation: From Eros to Environmental Responsibility, is forthcoming with Edinburgh University Press in January 2026.

Before arriving at Gonzaga I was engaged in graduate study at Boston College, where I defended my dissertation in May of 2022, and Loyola Marymount University. For the past ten years, including the past three years here at Gonzaga, who I am—including my pedagogical approach, research interests, spirituality, and even family life—have been shaped by Jesuit, Catholic institutions. Mentors at these institutions have played central roles in my intellectual and spiritual journey. I have come to deeply appreciate Ignatian pedagogy, and Ignatian spirituality, in tandem with deepening love for the Catholic Intellectual Tradition (which began in quiet hours spent soaking in and discussing great books in my undergraduate years at the Torrey Honors Institute [now College] of Biola University), and for Catholic Social Teaching (beginning in a Junior year Religion class at Santa Margarita Catholic High School). I love inviting students to join me in addressing the kinds of questions that motivate my thinking, holistically: questions about God, the human person, animals, ethics, and nature. A theme throughout my courses is that together, in dialogue with ancient and contemporary voices, we reflect upon both the advances and the shortcomings of contemporary society, in light of transcendent ideals (i.e. Truth, Goodness, Justice, Beauty). In response to the biases of our time, which have inevitably shaped our desires and aspirations—especially self-interested individualism and dissatisfied consumerism—our aim is to become persons who care: for each other, for others, both human and nonhuman, and for the natural world.