Self-Presentation

Abstract

I came to phenomenology late in my philosophical studies. At the close of my undergraduate training, which was based in the history of philosophy, I encountered contemporary analytic philosophy. I found it confusing: it simply did not seem to me to be philosophy. In my graduate studies, I pursued analytic philosophy further. The more I read, the more I was convinced that it was groundless and unconnected with experience, especially in its attempts to reduce essences to physical processes, sterile logical forms, or relativistic artifacts of language. Meanwhile, I pursued the study of Greek philosophy. Having begun a dissertation on being and meaning in Plato and Parmenides, I encountered Husserl’s Logical Investigations, with its fresh account of essences. This book changed my life, and my dissertation topic. I find in phenomenology the lived grounding of thought in experience which is central to traditional philosophy.

Date of birth: December 14, 1946.

Place of birth: Michigan City, IN.

Ph.D., University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada), 1977.

Academic appointments: University of Alberta; University of Guelph; Nipissing University College, North Bay, Ontario; Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario; Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology; The University of Texas at Arlington.