Recovering the Personal: The Philosophical Anthropology of William H. Poteat

(Hardback)

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Modernity has radically challenged the assumptions that guide our ordinary lives as persons, in ways we are not normally aware. We live our concrete lives taking for granted that personal decisions, desires, relationships, actions, aspirations, values, and knowledge are central to our existence. But in modernity, we think of these matters as private, idiosyncratic, and subjective, even irrational. This modern conception of ourselves and the associated way of reflection known as modern critical thinking came to dominate our thinking is culminates in the dualistic philosophy of Ren Descartes. This dualism has spawned a reductionist view of persons and tainted the personal with connotations of bias, partiality, and privacy, leaving us with the presumption that if we seek to be objective and intellectually respectable, we must expunge the personal. William H. Poteats work in philosophical anthropology has confronted this concern head on. He undertakes a radical critique of the various forms of mind-body dualism and materialist monism that have dominated Western intellectual concepts of the person. In a unique style that Poteat calls post-critical, he uncovers the staggering incoherencies of these dualisms and shows how they have resulted in a loss of the personal in the modern age. He also formulates a way out of this modern cultural insanity. This constructive dimension of his thought is centered on his signature concept of the mindbody, the pre-reflective ground of personal existence. The twelve contributors in this collection explore outgrowths and implications of Poteats thought. Recovering the Personal will be of interest to a broad range of intellectual readers with interests in philosophy, psychology, theology, and the humanities.

Reviews

These essays, especially those by Bruce Haddox and Edward St. Clair, include richly evocative reminiscences of what it was like to be Poteats student. They also, especially those by Dale Cannon and Ron Hall, include fine expositions of Polanyis thought. . . . How appropriate that this jewel box of a book should culminate with such a rich example of how Poteats language itself, plumbed to its premodern depths, can help us find our way back to where we have been all along, but awakened from the amnesia modernity has fostered in us and refreshed for the tasks of weaning our intellectual world in its many facets from the deadly fixations that threaten to blind it to the obvious." * Tradition & Discovery *
This book is an echo chamber, fraught with strong voices out of regard for a common program, accompanied by an invitation to those readers assiduous in search of fresh provocations. The provocative voice of William H. Poteat populates the echo chambers of his students and auditors from their first meetings to postmortem recollections in their own classrooms and studies. It is cunningly appropriate these essays were first uttered in the voices of the authors in a conference at Yale Divinity School, called to celebrate the establishment of the Poteat Archive. For the readers of these essays it is a bonus to have reprinted an essay by Poteat which offers them an exhibition of his work in its prime as well as providing the readers an opportunity to reappraise the essays in this collection in the immediate vicinity of Paul Cezanne and the Numinous Power of the Real." -- Ruel Tyson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
This collection of essays, devoted to the philosophy of William H. Poteat, is the first of its kind. Required reading for those concerned with Polanyi and philosophical anthropology, it will also be of interest to anyone concerned with existentialism or phenomenology, or anyone simply curious about where modern philosophy went wrong. Devoted to the personal and the post-critical, the essays are themselves warmly personal, celebrating the life and teaching of professor Poteat as much as his work. -- Ryan Hickerson, Western Oregon University

Author Bio

Dale W. Cannon is professor emeritus of philosophy and religious studies at Western Oregon University. Ronald L. Hall is professor of philosophy at Stetson University.