I'm an assistant teaching professor in the department of philosophy here at the University of Notre Dame. I also teach God and the Good Life, along with various courses on the ethics of character, responsibility, and the evaluation of blief (a field of philosophy called "epistemology").
I recently wrote a book with another Notre Dame Professor, Meghan Sullivan, that explores how to implement virtue ethics in today's world. In many ways, this class uses this method to explore issues more connected with one's work life.
I have three small children. My wife and I love them, and love to take them to parks, hiking on very simple trails, and to the beach when it's not insanely cold.I'm absolutely thrilled to be teaching "The Working Life" this semester. I plan to write a book proposal on this content, and see this seminar as a way to workshop ideas, share inspiration, and truly work out our own -- and I'm including myself in this group -- "philosophy of work."
Hi, I'm Dr. Jensen!
I received my Ph.D. in philosophy from Notre Dame in the summer of 2021, and I've been teaching philosophy courses at Our Lady's university ever since.
Some philosophical questions that perennially return me to reflection include "How do I live wisely?", "How do I live a philosophical life?", and "What must I do to be happy?".
If you were to browse my library in search of a sense of my philosophical preoccupations, here's most of what you'd find: the literatures of Christian and Buddhist monasticism (especially those of the Benedictine and Sōtō Zen traditions), wisdom literature from a variety of ascetical religious traditions (including Judaism, Vedanta, Taoism, Jainism, and Islam), the works of Plato and the Hellenistic schools (e.g., the Stoics), and the works of Pascal, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, Simone Weil, and Byung-Chul Han. Agrarian traditions of thought (as articulated in the writings of Wendell Berry, for example) are also of great interest to me, and I wrote my dissertation on a kind of localism and love for one's home place.
My other loves include baseball, jazz, and green tea. I live with my wife on a homestead just north of South Bend city limits, where I spend much of my free time working around the house and on our land, cooking, reading, and writing.
