Phillip Allen Shaw
Honors Instructor of Humanities
John Wesley Honors College
Phillip Allen Shaw is the Honors Instructor of Humanities in the John Wesley Honors College, where he seeks to share his love of Great Books and the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty as transcendental realities which illumine our understanding of, and participation in, what it means to be more fully human.
His research interests include definitions of virtue and happiness in Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, as well as the implications of those motifs for the city in economic theory and political philosophy.
While he certainly has a love for exploring piety, beauty, friendship, hospitality, human desire, storytelling, invisibility, and the cardinal virtues as manifest in The Iliad and Odyssey, Phillip wants to be absolutely clear, “First and foremost, Homer is one of my friends.” Shaw also is interested in the ontological formulation of romantic love and grief (IV), as well as the Elysian fields in the underworld (VI), within Vergil’s Aeneid.
More recently, Phillip has been contemplating the limitation of epistemology in La Divina Commedia as a necessary contrapasso for humanity to properly restore the theological virtues faith and hope, and ordered desire as the essence of bliss, which for Dante Alighieri, the poet and pilgrim, finds its ultimate longing and locus in The Beatific Vision.
Previously, Phillip served as the Chair of the Department of Classical Languages at Regent Preparatory School of Oklahoma, a classical Christian school, where he taught courses in Classical Latin, Theology, Art History & Imitation, and The National Parks. There, he sat as a Declamation and Senior Thesis jurist, played a formative role in shaping the aesthetics and interior design of the School of Rhetoric renovation project, initiated a Symphony Club to foment a love for live classical music performances among students, and helped develop National Merit Scholars.
Shaw is naturally a lover of bow ties, Indian and Thai curries, The Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens, The Detroit Institute of Arts, The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Old Globe in San Diego, the National Parks system, and especially Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 5.
COURSES
HNR 285 - Great Texts in Context I
(Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Vergil, Ovid)
HNR 385 - Great Texts in Context II
(Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Voltaire, Douglass, O’Connor)
HNR 185 - Rhetoric and the Sacramental Imagination
(co-teaching with Dr. Lanta Davis)
EDUCATION
The University of Chicago, Intensive Ancient Greek (Attic)
University of Notre Dame, Graduate Studies in Classical Latin
New York University, Graduate Studies in Historical Hebrew Grammar, Akkadian
Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, M.A. Biblical Languages (Summa Cum Laude)
Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, M.A. New Testament
Indiana Wesleyan University, B.S. Secondary Education, Minor Biblical Literature
MEMBERSHIPS
Society for Classical Studies
Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy
The Institute of Classical Architecture & Art
The Classical Association of the Middle West and South
The Vergilian Society
The Dante Society of America
CONTACT
Email: phillip.shaw@indwes.edu