About Max
I’ve been interested in communication since my first year in community college. That’s when I took a public speaking class and actually liked it, even though I was terrified most of the time. I felt those same sparks of energy and aliveness when I started teaching. I find meaning and joy in helping support and facilitate others’ growth, especially when it results in deep shifts in perspective that totally change a person’s relationship to themselves, others, and the world.
As a person, philosopher, and philosophical counselor, I don’t identify with any particular philosophical tradition or school of thought. But I owe a debt of gratitude to a wide variety of sources that have made me who I am—especially the ancient Greek philosopher and sage, Socrates, and his student, Plato, and his student, Aristotle. I also owe much to the philosophical traditions of Stoicism, Taoism, Confucianism, Neoplatonism, some of the Western medieval philosophers, like Aquinas, as well as some contemporary approaches, like Pragmatism and Virtue Ethics. I also have a growing interest in Indigenous philosophy.
As a philosophical counselor, my approach similarly follows no single method. You can, however, expect a dialogue with me to involve deep listening, empathetic attunement, and a kind of exploratory Socratic inquiry that invites you into deeper awareness about your own thinking, feeling, and action. Contemporary research in philosophy, psychological, and cognitive science has shown what the ancient philosophical traditions already knew—that thinking and feeling are deeply intertwined. So, in dialogue together, we seek to remain open to how thoughts feel and how feelings generate thoughts. All of these qualities of being are part of human existence, and therefore important in philosophical dialogue and reflection.
My Ph.D. (2017) and M.A. (2011) in philosophy are from the University of Oklahoma, and I was certified as a philosophical counselor by the American Philosophical Practitioner’s Association (APPA) in 2023. I meet regularly with a small group of other APPA-certified philosophical counselors to continue deepening our skills and coaching each other, under the supervision of a senior philosophical counselor. I’ve pursued a variety of additional certifications and trainings relevant to philosophical counseling, including:
- Circling Facilitator Training – Level 2 (2-year program), with The Circling Institute (in progress)
- The Art of Circling Practitioner Training – Level 1 (8 month program), with The Circling Institute (2024)
- Dialectic into Dialogos 12-Week Intensive, with Awaken to Meaning (2023)
- Circling and Dialogos, with The Circling Institute (2022)
- The Wisdom Project, with Dr. Iris Stammberger (2022)
In addition to teaching philosophy full-time at Fresno City College and my philosophical counseling practice, I’m also a kettlebell instructor (SFG1, certified through StrongFirst). I’m interested in physical training as a kind of mindfulness practice, and in the parallels between strength of body and strength of the inner self (or what the ancient Greeks would call the soul).