Professor Robert Hahn
Distinguished Teacher, Outstanding Scholar
Robert A. Hahn, Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, has taught for almost 50 years, and enjoyed the last 42 years of his career in the College of Liberal Arts at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He currently teaches courses in Ancient Philosophy in Yale University’s Alumni College.
As an acting professor of archaeology, now Emeritus, Professor Hahn was granted the license by the Greek Ministry of Culture, for more than 40 years, to lead groups at archaeological sites and museums.
Professor Hahn is the only SIU philosophy professor to have been honored with the award for The Outstanding Teacher of the College and The Outstanding Scholar of the College. Moreover, he was honored as The Outstanding Educator of the University. In 2025, he received the University-level Teaching Excellence Award for tenured and tenure-track faculty, “The Outstanding Teacher of the University”. The award bestows upon the recipient the permanent title Distinguished Teacher.
A passion for educating.
“We spend most of our lives working, and if you do not love your job, you will have difficulty loving your life. By some great good luck, I chose a career path that I still love half-a-century later.”
Ancient Legacies Travel Programs
Forty years of intellectual adventures in Egypt, Greece, and Turkey
Past and upcoming presentations
Work on Anaximander, temple planning, cosmology, and modularity
Here was this philosopher’s dream come true.
“I wanted to have the groups consider ‘Ancient Legacies’ – what could we still learn from these great peoples from long ago – and focused on perennial questions: What is the meaning of life? What makes a good life? What happens when we die, and what difference do our answers make to how we live our lives?
Each year for decades, I led them into the Great Pyramids, into King Tut’s tomb, and as we cruised the Nile, we discussed the meaning of life, death, and the possibility of an afterlife. Here was this philosopher’s dream come true.”
Gallery
Professor Robert Hahn 