Self-Presentation

Abstract

So you want from me a self-presentation? Well, I am a philosophical realist, a real old-fashioned, sixteenth-seventeenth century realist. (Should I use a capital R when I write ‘realism’?) Yes, I am old-fashioned. I believe in such unbelievables as truths-in-themselves, many of which are nonetheless perfectly well known by human beings like me. I believe in absurdities like knowers who do not get involved, physically, carnally, or hermeneutically, with what they know, but stand outside the world they know. I find the hermeneutic circle neither as disturbing nor as vicious as a ratiocinative circle. I believe that there is a real world beyond our interpretations or conceptual schemes. I do not believe that everything we bring with us in our efforts at knowing that world necessarily distorts our view of it. As you can see already, I am from another age, an age before that of Kant and Hegel, not to mention Husserl and Heidegger. To be sure, I do not dress the way folks dressed at that time; I am, in fact, a bit sensitive to the new fashions as they come along.

Date of birth: July 18, 1932.

Place of birth: Opende, The Netherlands.

Date and Institution of highest degree: Ph.D., University of Toronto, 1962.

Academic appointments: University of Toronto.