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Philosophy
Stuff
Currently
I am researching material for a book about nature in the
novels of Jane Austen. There is at once too much and not
enough to say anything more of this just now. So:
My
work on the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer traces his
aesthetic values to more fundamental epistemological
views. In particular “Schopenhauer On the Proper
Foundation of Art” in the Cambridge
Companion to Schopenhauer demonstrates the epistemological
underpinnings of aesthetic activity. “Living with Anna
Karenina,” co-authored with Aarto Haapala of Helsinki
University, argues for an ontology of literary characters that
puts them on firm metaphysical ground as cultural
entities. A different study, “Texture: Old Material,
Fresh Novelties,” links individuated tactile awareness to
literary and historically significant locations, while still
another, “The Narrative and the Ambient in Environmental
Aesthetics,” generates a matrix for grasping dichotomous but
ultimately mutually reinforcing methods in environmental
aesthetic valuations or appreciations.
This
latter piece has also served as the theoretical basis for my
participation in two funded research projects.
The first of these, “Amenity Values of Farm and
Forest” (funded by the United States Department of
Agriculture), uses the matrix I present to clarify a
phenomenon identified as non-convexity by resource
economists. Briefly, stakeholders appear to prefer
forested land in their community even when agricultural
landscapes are rarer there, and vice versa. Classical
economic theory cannot account for this devaluation of what is
rarer. I am working with a team of accomplished land-use
scholars to create models that account for unexpected
non-market values in landscape preference studies. A
more recent project, “Assessing Change in Coastal
Ecosystems: Integrating Natural and Social Sciences” (funded
by the National Science Foundation), uses more extensive
humanistic tools based on my work to bridge communicative gaps
between coastal science and policy, and between the academy
and the public at large. I was a primary author of the
NSF grant with five URI colleagues. Spending time with
these folks every week is intellectually invigorating, as I
must learn a lot of science and policy that exists well off my
educational map.
The
application of philosophical frameworks to actual coastal,
environmental and aesthetics cases has long formed a part of
my scholarly endeavors. “Appreciating Nature in
American Culture,” in Restoring
Nature: Perspectives from the Social Sciences and the
Humanities, draws on artistic, ecological and
civic-religious dimensions of American life to examine
restoration controversies about The Old Man of the Mountain in
New Hampshire and The Eye of the Needle Arch in Montana.
Another book chapter, “I’ve Looked at Clouds from Both
Sides Now: Can There Be Aesthetic Qualities in Nature?,”
uses meteorology to tease out what meaning the idea of
“aesthetic qualities” can have in relation to nature,
while my most recent work, “Wherefore the Rhizome? Eelgrass
Restoration on the Narragansett Bay,” examines the potential
cultural, aesthetic or pragmatic value of this ecologically
sensitive grass in a community where 75% of the populace does
not know what it is.
Beyond
Philosophy
Equivocal
in my relationship to the academy, I am nevertheless a
philosopher at heart, an artist working in concepts and ideas.
I publish in scholarly contexts but when I write, I
write for the reader beyond them. This vocation has assumed
different mantels throughout my career. I am currently
professor of philosophy straight up but in previous years I
have been a part-time administrator in the URI Honors Program
and before that I held an odd assortment of positions:
teaching appointments in the UK, an artist’s agent for a
Japanese sculptor, program assistant to a television show host
moonlighting on a university campus, educational consultant
for a major urban school system, outreach program developer
for a corporation, college admissions officer, program
assistant for more than one state government office and a
scooper of ice cream in a family owned roadside stand. I
sometimes wonder if this last position – the first I held
temporally – was not in many ways my favorite.
The
scholar has always fought for my professional attention with
the activist. At URI I have pursued a conventional
academic track while at the same time founding and directing a
Fellowship Access Program for students from public
universities. Since the mid-1990’s I have been an
active proponent of equity in access to major fellowships,
serving on regional and national selection committees for the
Marshall, Gates and Truman Programs, being elected to the
Board of Directors of the National Association of Fellowship
Advisers and publishing articles on related topics. In
addition to the fellowship work I served for six years as a
Director on the Board of the North American Nature Photography
Association, for whom I co-authored among other things codes
of ethics for field practice and for the labeling of digital
images. I have also served on the Board of Waterfire
Providence, an urban installation/performance work on a
city-wide scale, and I regularly deliver talks for citizens’
groups and organizations.
My
path to this point has led me beyond the academy as much as it
has kept me coming back to the freedoms it allows. We
live in a time of fragility for freedom, and in the spirit of
eighteenth century essayists I increasingly strive to write in
a manner that can be read perhaps more than be studied;
writing for a public in need of ideas without ideological
rancor or too many footnotes; erudition that doesn’t talk
down. Readers, perhaps, shrink in numbers among
us. But I am not prepared to abandon them yet. Writing
for readers represents my favored form of advocacy, of
activism.
That,
and teaching. Aside from writing for audiences beyond
professional philosophy, I have found the true synthesis of my
many passions in teaching the young adult mind. At once
performance and pondering, teaching has sustained my spirit
when the vanity and compromised careerism of much academic
activity could not. I have received formal recognition
for my teaching, including the URI Foundation Teaching
Excellence Award and a citation related to this from the
American Philosophical Association. Whenever I stand on
the cusp of leaving the academy, my students keep pulling me
back. I have yet to stop learning from them. They
reward the best of my efforts while helping me to keep my
limitations firmly in view.
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