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1. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 6 > Issue: 2
Charles W. Harvey Introduction: Philosophy Through Personal Narrative
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2. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 6 > Issue: 2
Joel H. Marks Stories for and by Students: Personalizing the Teaching of Philosophy
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In the beginning I was the typical academic philosophy professor and teacher, whose stock in trade was argumentative essays about abstract issues. It puzzled, or bemused, even distressed me, therefore, when I would sometimes hear my students refer to the assigned readings in my courses as "stories." I attributed this inappropriate nomenclature to their inexperience with anything other than fiction and literature prior to their first philosophy course. But the shoe is now on the other foot. I myself have become the purveyor of stories: I write them, I assign them as reading, and I ask my students to write their own.
3. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 6 > Issue: 2
Laura Duhan Kaplan Eros and the Future: Levinas's Philosophy of Family
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The paper is triggered by an account of a midnight when wordless strands of erotic and parental love began to weave themselves together into a theoryof the family. The theory is then put into words, borrowing from Emmanuel Levinas 's discussion of "Eros and Fecundity" in Totality and Infinity. A commitment to family is simply a special case of ethical relationships in which family members are constantly drawn outside of themselves in response to one another. To have family connections is to have a future, i.e., a commitment to what is unknown, unknowable, and ever-unfolding.
4. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 6 > Issue: 2
Charles W. Harvey The Ghosts Within Us, the Others Without: My Father, My Self
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In this essay I use personal narrative concerning my father and myself to compare and contrast the Heideggerian/sociological idea of "being-alongside-others" in the public world with the more classical philosophical ideal of inter subjective contact between two selves. I try to show that "being-alongside-others " in the public world does not dissolve the issue of intersubjectivity. To do this, I use narrative vignettes and develop some ideas about the role that intimacy plays in developing the sense of self; in particular, I reflect on this process in terms of the relations of parents and children.
5. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 6 > Issue: 2
J. Craig Hanks Wishing and Hoping: Some Thoughts on the Place of the Future in a Philosophy of the Present
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In this essay I think about the ways in which orientation towards the future plays a central role in constituting meaningful lives. Much intellectual work on the nature of persons takes our existence as something given and static, and much of it treats persons as either isolated individuals, or as completely subsumed within a social identity. However, we are both, and neither; we are always individuals, and we are always social creatures, and yet we are never fully either of these. Understanding who and what we are in each of these ways reveals something important, but each understanding also reduces us and limits our self-comprehension in dangerous ways. In response I suggest that we refashion the notion of "hope " as an act of subjective faith and self-creation, and as anorientation only possible within free and loving human communities. Perhaps this is willfully naive, but without hope it seems we will drift, or be driven, and our lives will fail to be ours.
6. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 6 > Issue: 2
R. Paul Churchill Seeking Loyalty: A Personal and Philosophical Journey
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7. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 6 > Issue: 2
Patricia J. Thompson Philosopher Without Portfolio: Seeking the Truth in Everyday Life
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Not every philosopher engages in personal reflection, and many who reflect would not count themselves philosophers. For this writer, "narrative " is the natural expression of reflection. This paper traces the origins of a philosophical standpoint that exists outside of the conventional discourses of philosophy. Informed by feminist writing on "the other," it suggests that by revisiting two archetypal figures in Greek mythology previously discussed in PCW (Thompson 1996; 1998), it may be possible to discern two mutually defining "ways of seeing" and two "ways of knowing " that are complementary, but not necessarily confined by gender. Based on a reconceptualization of the ancient Greek oikos and polls, the proposed paradigm describes two mutually defining systems of action - the Hestian (domestic) and the Hermean (civic) that co-exist and co-emerge in everyday life.
8. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 6 > Issue: 2
Carol Zibell Becoming What I Was (Not): Thoughts on Bible Stories and Sartrean Existentialism
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In this essay I analyze my early childhood training in fundamentalist Christianity in terms of my more recent readings of Sartrean existentialism; to a lesser extent, I suggest how Christian doctrine sheds light on some of Sartre's insights. Since this essay is an exercise in philosophy through personal narrative, my life is used as the mediating juncture of these two systems of thought.