A Tribute to Tom Warren (Solano Community College), My First Philosophy Teacher

(Solano Community College, Suisun, California)

The first philosophy class I ever took was during the Fall 1996 semester at Solano Community College in Suisun, California with Dr. Thomas H. Warren (known by most as “Tom Warren”). It was an Introduction to Philosophy course, but I also ended up taking two other courses taught by Tom Warren—Critical Thinking and Introduction to Political Philosophy.

As I move into the second half of my career as a philosopher and a philosophy instructor, I find myself looking back more frequently at the various philosophical influences in my own philosophical education and training, grateful for the amazing teachers that I was privileged to study under, however briefly. While other philosophy instructors and mentors later in my educational career may have had a bigger influence on me philosophically, Tom Warren was my very first philosophy instructor and succeeded in sparking a lifelong interest not just in philosophy, but in the history, the romance, and the drama of philosophy through the ages, from ancient times to our time today.

Sadly, Tom Warren passed away a few years ago, but I’m happy that I kept in touch with him, however infrequently, so he knew the impact he had made on my life and career as a philosopher, even if philosophically I had diverged from the issues that he found most pressing for the purpose of an Introduction to Philosophy course. (Incidentally, Solano Community College now has a Dr. Thomas H. Warren Memorial Scholarship, which was established in 2018 following Tom’s death.)

Also sadly, the years have caused various memories of that first philosophy class to fade, now nearly 25 years in the past. But I wanted to share a few memories of those early philosophy courses by Tom Warren at Solano Community College, which were formative for me and my career as a philosopher, no matter how much time may rob me of the specific memories themselves.

The thing that comes to mind immediately when thinking back to that first Intro to Philosophy course with Tom Warren was Tom’s animated teaching style. Tom was not a tall person, but he somehow seemed larger than life in person, pacing about and gesturing with his arms and hands as he lectured dramatically, passionately even, about the early days of philosophy, about Plato’s Socratic dialogues in particular. I believe the very first reading we had was Plato’s Protagoras dialogue, and I remember the passion with which Tom spoke of the difference between the Sophists and philosophers—between mere rhetoric and genuine philosophy with its search for truth for its own sake.

I also have a vivid mental image of Tom Warren sitting atop the table at the front of the tiny classroom at Solano Community College, his legs dangling from the table with ankles crossed, his head dipped down and turned slightly to one side, deep in thought, making some new connection or searching for the perfect phrase to capture the insight of the moment. To me, that image of Tom Warren is stuck in my memory like an impressionist painting of the prototypical philosopher, pure of heart and free of the glitz and glamour associated with more public philosophers of the late 20th century, completely lacking in the suave Frenchness and media savviness of, say, Michel Foucault or Jacques Derrida. No, Tom Warren was a philosopher who put the philosophy first and public perception and popular opinion second, even though he clearly loved being master of the stage in his own classroom (often with a Machiavellian gleam in his eye).

I remember the very first day of that very first introduction to Philosophy class, when Tom Warren began the class with the question “Why does anything exist instead of nothing at all?” While it’s easy to dismiss this question as rhetorical nonsense, it’s a question that has stuck with me through the years. It is arguably the most fundamental metaphysical and philosophical question of all, and the grandeur of that first philosophical question from Tom Warren arguably gave me a sense of the nature of philosophy as being both cosmic and epic, if not mystical, in scope.

One of the most useful practical lessons I learned about reading philosophy from Tom Warren is that you should liberally take notes and to write your own philosophical reflections and responses right in the margins of the text you’re reading. Although students often dreaded the way in which Tom would walk up and down the aisle of the classroom asking to see the margin notes that students were supposed to have made in their books the night before, this advice has served me well in my academic career, and to this day my own philosophy books are peppered with my own pre-philosophical notes, reflections, thoughts, and musings. Writing your thoughts in the margins emphasizes the fact that reading philosophy is not merely about taking in information but is inherently dialectical and dialogical, a true conversation and meeting of the minds between you and the long-dead philosophers whose thoughts, ideas, and even hopes and dreams we can access in the words they left behind for us to engage with and to continue the conversation in ways that matter for us today.

After I took Tom Warren’s Introduction to Philosophy class, I decided to take his Critical Thinking class, which, at the time, fulfilled the IGETC (Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum) California State University transfer requirement. As nineteen-year-olds are prone to doing, however, I had other priorities that semester (likely having to do with my girlfriend at the time!), such that I actually failed Tom’s Critical Thinking class, merely because I failed to keep up with the work. (Only later in life do we learn to balance regular sex with our other responsibilities!)

At the end of the semester, Tom asked to see me in his office after class. Naturally I was intimidated at the thought of getting a dressing-down from a philosophy teacher I had already come to admire. Tom, however, gave me a much-needed pep talk and a push to keep going with my education. He basically said, paraphrasing, “You are a smart guy and I know you can do well in this class, but you’ll have to work for it. Take the class again, either with me or with another instructor if you’d rather take it from a different instructor. But take it again and do better next time.” Tom had the right balance of firmness and compassion to care enough to give me a push forward while making sure I knew that being flippant about my own education wouldn’t get me where I wanted to be. Without a doubt, I would not have become a philosopher or have made the turn into the headwinds of my own education that I did without that push from Tom Warren, for which I will be ever grateful.

I’ve had the chance now myself to be many students’ first philosophy instructor, a weighty responsibility in its own right, and I’ve had the chance to give many a student the same kind of firm-handed but confidence-instilling pep talk that Tom Warren gave to me those many years ago—a testament to the continuity of education, of students becoming the masters, of those who were once mentees becoming mentors for their students in turn, much in the same way that Socrates taught Plato, who taught Aristotle, who in turn taught Alexander the Great. On and on through the centuries and across the millennia, philosophy—the love of wisdom—has been handed down from teacher to student, and to their students after them, some of whom go on to become philosophers and philosophy teachers themselves, sometimes even surpassing their own teachers in ability or accomplishment, much in the way that Martin Heidegger went on to surpass his own teacher Edmund Husserl in influence and impact on the history of philosophy, or in the way that Marcus Aurelius went on to surpass the teachers and philosophers he cites as influences in Book I of his Meditations. (See my previous blog post about Book I of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations here: Footnotes in the History of Philosophy - The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius - Book I.)

Just as there are various lineages in the history of philosophy—say from Socrates to Plato to Aristotle, or from Husserl to Heidegger to Kojève to Sartre—each philosopher can trace his or her own philosophical lineage through their teachers to their teachers’ teachers, and to their teachers before them, all the way back to Socrates and the Presocratics, no matter what philosophical twists and turns that lineage may take. And, of course, we each have more than one thread of philosophical influences from the various philosophical lineages and influences of each of our teachers, forming a tree or web of interlocking, overlapping, and sometimes competing influences that shape our worldview and our philosophical outlook, even our view of what it means to be a philosopher in the first place.

While Tom Warren wasn’t the only influence in my tree of philosophical lineages, he was one of the roots of the tree, the first influence who set me on a path to becoming a philosopher, even after handing over the proverbial baton and entrusting my philosophical education to those philosophy teachers who would come after him for me—Philip Clayton, Roger Bell, Andrew Botterell, Ken Bubb, Kurt Roggli, David Hoy, Jocelyn Hoy, Ric Otte, Jon Ellis, Dan Guevara, and other philosophy instructors too numerous to mention in a single pass, but each of whom deserves a similar tribute in his or her own right, just as Marcus Aurelius once thought to give thanks and recognition to the many teachers, philosophers, and family members who made him into the person, emperor, and philosopher he would become.

Tom Warren the man is gone now, Socrates’s arguments for the immortality of the soul in Plato’s Phaedo dialogue notwithstanding. Yet Tom Warren fought the good fight as a philosopher and philosophy instructor, and he fulfilled his chosen role of passing on philosophy to those who were willing to listen and open enough not just to be taught, but to genuinely love philosophy and to make it part of their own identity and lives.

Tom Warren may ultimately be forgotten as a philosopher, as I myself may be—even likely be—one day, too. But, like those often-anonymous Medieval scribes and Arab scholars on account of whom our knowledge of ancient philosophy survived the cultural decline of the Middle Ages, awaiting the rebirth of western culture in the Renaissance, Tom Warren did his part, as I and the countless philosophy teachers around the country and world are doing each and every day, to keep the dream of philosophy in general and the dream of every philosopher who came before us alive for our students, for the world, and for a blessed day, perhaps far in the future, when those “future philosophers,” to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche, pick up the same baton, not just to read or learn about philosophy but to truly live it, freeing themselves and the entire world from the “tyranny of the present,” as Tom Warren once said. What better gift could a philosophy instructor give to the future? I can think of none better.