A- Note on Method and Interest

From the very beginning of my classes in the Philosophy department at SIU, strong emphasis was placed on the primacy of the text under consideration in any academic writing, so that was the origin of my method in any philosophy paper I wrote for class. This element was strong in the teaching of Professors John Howie, Garth Gillan, George Schedler, Robert Hahn, Mark Johnson, and Stephen Tyman. I read the book at least once through and then go to secondary books and then to philosophers index and find any articles I could that appeared to have connection to my topic. Then on the second and subsequent readings I would write 1) what I thought to be ‘key’ sections of the text, as notes on notecards, and 2) any thoughts that would pop into my head relating to that section of the text and the subject of the text. In this way I could be assured that what I wrote was based on the text, and was not any attempt to manufacture or connect meaning that was not text related. From these 2 sets of notes, I then attempted to find a coherent thread to compose my piece. In my mind and in my heart this then made my attempt an effort at what I considered to be ‘authentic Philosophy’- either academic or however slightly original the writing might be- at least it was my authentic best effort at writing authentic scholarship and philosophy.

So this was the method I diligently executed in writing all the essays in the Kant Variations. This then explains the condensed nature of the writing. I made no attempt to write in any particular tradition, but just wrote what I found in the text, on the topics in the text that seemed important to the meaning of the book. In the end, especially for me, understanding the text is primary, and the work comes from there, and then the kind of philosopher you naturally are is revealed after the fact.

Now, From a review of my comments throughout the essays, it is clear that what I focused on in the texts of Kant, Adorno, Levinas, Derrida, Gadamer, and others, were sections of the text that describes and relates to some sort of direct experience, that explains complex phenomenon of thought, and/or human experience, and/or evidence of god in experience, in the overall understanding of the book, and in the overall contribution to understanding how the text contributes to the wisdom of life. This then, as a Philosopher, first and foremost makes me a Pragmatist, even though the subjects focused on were from the tradition of Kant, Adorno, and Levinas. In retrospect, I believe that it was the Pragmatic aspects and religious orientation of Ricouer’s writing and descriptions that drew me along through his work

So what I’ve written then is a Pragmatist philosophical/theological reading/meditation of sections of the Critique of Judgment, the Critique of Practical Reason, the Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, Mein Kampf, Negative Dialectics, and Totality and Infinity. This puts me squarely in the midst of the Pragmatist, Kant, and recent continental traditions.

This is quite funny to me- because even though I have read Dewey’s ‘Nature and Experience’, and some book of William James. I have no extensive training or experience with Pierce, or Dewey, or Rorty or any of the other Pragmatists. And apparently I need to read Victor Anderson (Vanderbilt) ‘Pragmatic Theology (1992), as well as his dissertation which covers another subject of pragmatic theology. Here I spend all this time on Kant, and I am a pragmatist. But I guess that’s how it goes if you are to honestly discover the type of thinker you are, that your method of Philosophy doesn’t exactly match that of tradition of your subject.

Sincerely,

Rick Luczak