Self-Presentation

Abstract

My interest in phenomenology was stimulated at the beginning of my graduate studies at Fordham University in 1951 by courses given by Dietrich von Hildebrand and Balduin Schwarz, and later by Quentin Lauer. My M.A. dissertation, “Some Presuppositions in American Value-Theory,” undertook a critique of naturalist theories from a phenomenological perspective. A tour of duty with the U.S. Army in France, 1953–1955, put me in contact with newer phenomenological work in France — Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, et al. Returning to Fordham, I undertook a doctoral dissertation on “Max Scheler’s Philosophy of Value,” which intensified my interest in “non-cognitive” aspects of phenomenological theory. While teaching at Duquesne University (1956–1964), I came in contact with European phenomenologists such as Louis van Haecht, Jean Ladriere, Joseph Kockelmans, Remy Kwant and others. Translations (of Joseph Dopp’s Formal Logic, Wagner, 1960, and van Haecht’s “Phenomenology, Psychoanalysis and Modern Art: Their Common Roots,” Cross Currents, 1959) extended my contact with European thought, as did also my reviews in the Journal of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry, and the Duquesne Review. At Duquesne University, I taught graduate courses in phenomenology occasionally.

Date of birth: August 29, 1929.

Place of birth: Jamaica, New York.

Date and institution of highest degree: Ph.D., Fordham University, 1962.

Academic appointments: Duquesne University; John Carroll University.