Nova PhDs

It is great to hear that the Berendzen tour of the country is going well! Any groupies yet?

On a different matter, friends, I have a suggestion/request. I love that we have this blog to keep our Villanova community together. I know that I am not the only one who is grateful for the education that I received from the Ph.D. program. Each of us has expressed and will continue to express this appreciation in different ways. I have an easy and concrete suggestion.

As you know, Dr. Walter Brogan brought Epoche to Villanova a couple of years ago. Epoche used to be housed in Utah and it was dormant at best. Walter has revived it and turned it into a wonderful journal of the history of philosophy. Each issue so far has been fantastic. There is a special issue on Derrida that will come out soon too. It makes the program look good.

In addition, a Villanova graduate student works with Walter on the journal every year, underlining the journal’s commitment to the professional development of the grad students as well as the importance of the journal to the program’s prestige and intellectual activity.

Villanova has thus far institutionally and financially supported Epoche, but as you all know even the best of journals compete for subscriptions.

I suggest that each of us who has been fortunate to have a job at a new institution ask the new library to subscribe to Epoche. American University, my new home, did not. It took a few seconds of sending an email to the librarian with the link and it was a done deal!

Please consider asking your libraries to promote Epoche. Thanks.

So, Joe has washed into town, so to speak. We are now trying to find him some money in exchange for a lecture or two - what else could we do?!? He joins the 25 or so undergraduates from various New Orleans universities who have found shelter at Villanova. (For those who are in the know: a P.I.M.P. night for Joe is in the works)

Thank you, Chris and John and Farhang, for your remarks re: my defense. You asked, Chris, about my defense and about my impressions on the process: I am glad to be done, but I too am somewhat ambivalent about the significance of the whole process. For about 4 months over the summer I fretted about fine details of my readings of, for example, Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenology of the called subject and Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics of the summoned subject . . . and none of this came up either during conversations with my committee or during my defense. I suppose I can assume I "nailed" this material, but I would have appreciated a more detailed response to what I wrote. (Now, I did receive detailed comments from several of the graduate students who volunteered to read individual chapters - and THIS response meant alot to me.)

Now that I am blurring conversation threads . . . finally: Sonja and I visited Farhang and Emily in DC last weekend. We had a good time. The area of "the district" that they live in is quite comfortable, and there are a number of nice places to eat and/or to sit and have a drink. A moment I particularly enjoyed was being greeted by the mad Iranian expatriate who owns a cafe/bar near their place, called the "Marx Cafe" ["revolutionary quisine"], with the words "Welcome Infidels!"

I am not sure if you folks caught this. A couple of days ago, an Op-Ed piece in the LA Times dealt with "The Subtext of the John Roberts nomination". The author, Crispin Sartwell, whom you may have read elsewhere, uses Wittgenstein and Gadamer for his analysis. I am not convinced that the word "subtext" is really what he was after, but it is good to see philosophy in a major newspaper. Also to notice: the author rightly went beyond "objectivism and relativism" of hermeneutics, by showing that Gadamer cared about context without being a skeptic or a relativist.

...who is apparently having a little trouble logging in right now:

"first, congratulations to greg, and condolences to joe. i once sat through a category one hurricane on maryland's eastern shore, and can't imagine what it must have been like in new orleans recently.

"second, i have a question for all of you critical theorists out there. is there a good book that would serve as an introduction to critical theory for someone already in academia, but not familiar with critical theory? a colleague of a colleague has been making some inquiries, and i thought that as a villanova alum., i would have a good pool of people to ask for help. any word would be much appreciated..."

An update on my status:

I am currently in western North Carolina, sponging off of Whitmire. I had previously been staying in a sort of Catholic commune in Memphis--long story. In any event, I am keeping active academically, at least insofar as John has arranged for me to give a lecture at Western Carolina. Interestingly, I spoke to a 2nd Grade class in downtown Memphis on Monday (again a long story), so I am thinking of turning this into a lecture tour. Look for me in your town...