Wanda Torres Gregory

Wanda Torres Gregory’s areas of teaching include contemporary philosophy, ethics, logic, nineteenth-century philosophy, and philosophy of language. A recipient of the 2001 Simmons University Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching, she has taught many different courses with the same objective of guiding students on the path of philosophy, the pursuit of wisdom. Her mission as a teacher is to inspire students to think philosophically — to wonder, reflect, and reason methodically about the great problems. The synergy of her teaching and scholarship is reflected in her textbook as leading editor, World Ethics (CA: Wadsworth, 2003), which includes multicultural and feminist perspectives along with the European classics in one comprehensive anthology in ethics.

Her scholarship is dedicated to the philosophy of language, and she specializes in twentieth-century German philosopher, Martin Heidegger. In her book, Speaking of Silence in Heidegger (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books-Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), she uncovers the conceptual links, levels, and dynamics at play in Heidegger’s reticent thoughts on silence from his early works to his last manuscripts, and critically assesses his later ideas of silence in terms of autonomous forces that define our essence as the beings who speak in word-sounds. Her earlier book Heidegger's Path to Language (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books-Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2018, reprinted in paperback), tracks, analyzes, and evaluates the development of Heidegger's reflections on language over the course of seven decades. This work, which represents a culminating point in her scholarly career, has received positive reviews in the journals Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews and Comparative and Continental Philosophy.

In addition to professional presentations and journal articles that focus on Heidegger and compare his views with those of twentieth-century analytic philosophers W.V. Quine, Rudolf Carnap, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, she has published the following two co-translations of Heidegger's works on language: On the Essence of Language (NY: SUNY Press, 2004), which was nominated in the spring of 2005 for the German Translation Award presented by the American Translators Association; and Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language (NY: SUNY Press, 2009), which was nominated for the Goethe Institute's 2010 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize.

Education

• BA, Political Science and Philosophy, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras
• MA, Philosophy, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras
• PhD, Philosophy, Boston University

Courses

• PHIL 122 Real-life Logic
• PHIL 123 Symbolic Logic
• PHIL 130 Ethics
• PHIL 136 Philosophy of Human Nature
• PHIL 152 Philosophy through Literature and Film
• PHIL 246 Who Am I? How Do I Know?
• PHIL 247 The Meaning of Life
• PHIL 258 Special Topics in Philosophy (Intermediate Symbolic Logic)
• PHIL 350 Independent Study (various topics)
• PHIL 355 Thesis (various topics)
• PHIL 370 Internship (various topics)
• PHIL 390 Seminar (Past topics: Philosophical Reflections on Language; Heidegger; Wittgenstein; Nietzsche)

Research/Creative Activities

Dr. Gregory's current research project is a reading of the original manuscript of Martin Heidegger's 1934 Freiburg lectures, which was presumed lost, but found in 2006 and published in 2020.