Professor Daniel Breyer, PhD

This course invites you to become an active participant in the challenging, but ultimately rewarding effort to understand, confront, and overcome the dark side of human nature.

InstitutionIllinois State University

Daniel Breyer is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Illinois State University, where he also serves as the director of the Religious Studies program. Dr. Breyer received a BA in Classics from the University of Montana, an MA in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, and a PhD in Philosophy from Fordham University.

Dr. Breyer’s research explores what it means to be a person and which features of ourselves we think are most important but also most puzzling. With this focus, he has addressed questions in the areas of epistemology, ethics, moral psychology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and Buddhist philosophy. He has been invited to share his scholarship at celebrated venues such as the Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy, and philosophers have discussed his work in leading publications. Dr. Breyer has been awarded competitive research grants for projects in both philosophy and religious studies, and he has been selected to participate in multiple interdisciplinary summer institutes funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the John Templeton Foundation.

Dr. Breyer’s students and colleagues have repeatedly recognized him for teaching excellence and instructional innovation. At Illinois State University, he has been awarded prestigious teaching awards, including the Outstanding University Teaching Award for pre-tenured faculty, the Kenneth A. and Mary Ann Shaw Teaching Fellowship, and the College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding College Teaching Award for the Humanities. He regularly teaches popular courses on Greco-Roman, Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian philosophy as well as courses on special topics like luck, evil, and blame. Dr. Breyer’s passion for teaching has also motivated him to teach philosophy outside the boundaries of the traditional classroom to elementary-age children, high school students, the general public, and fellow faculty.

Dr. Breyer has published on a wide range of topics, including value theory, divine foreknowledge, reflective luck, epistemic justification, cognitive agency, free will, and moral responsibility. His articles have appeared in top journals such as Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, and Sophia.