Assistant Professor, Philosophy; Chair, Performing Arts & Humanities
Nick VanHorn holds a Master of Arts (M.A.) in the Humanities with a concentration in Philosophy from Towson University, and a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Philosophy and English from Mount St. Mary’s University.
He was hired as faculty and coordinator of the Philosophy Program in 2017 and transitioned to his current position as Chair of the Performing Arts and Humanities in 2021.
His academic interests include existentialism, ethics, literary criticism, and environmental philosophy.
The thinkers with which he is most familiar are Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus, and Aristotle. Specifically, some of the themes he explores are death and dying; alienation, disillusionment, and nihilism; theories of the good life; philosophy of religion; and the intersection between philosophy, paradox, and poetry, with an emphasis on the limitations of language and logic.
More recently, he has been focused on the topics of embodiment, the ethics of care, and environmental philosophies. He views teaching philosophy and ethics as a vocation, not just a career. He also believes that philosophy and ethics should be taught at every level of education, and the fact that it is not explains a lot about our current society.
Outside of school, he prefers to spend his time in the company of his wife and daughter, who share a house in Harford County, where he enjoys gardening, hiking, and playing music.