Thinking About Thinking

Thinking about Thinking examines philosophy from a variety of perspectives as a the practice realized by persons who communicate with one another while reflecting about the meaning of human life and thought.

Without forgetting the logical and methodological conditions of systematic thought, the author insists on the intimate connections that tie all philosophical texts and conversations to the lives from which they emerge. As product of an individual thinker, who, thanks to individual teachers, has been familiarized with particular traditions of a particular culture, each philosophy is unique. If it is a good one, it is also revealing for many--perhaps even for all--other philosophers. At the same time, all thinking is addressed to individual interlocutors, each of whom responds to it by transforming it into a different philosophy. This fact invites us to explore the dialogical dimension of thinking, which, in turn, refers us to the communitarian and historical contexts from which solitude, as well as solidarity, competition, alliances, and friendships in thought emerge.

After the collapse of modern autonomy, the question of philosophy's dependence on prephilosophical conditions is a basic question of metaphilosophy -- especially if a philosophy is always entangled with or even rooted in some belief or trust or faith.

Adriaan T. Peperzak holds the Arthur J. Schmitt Chair of Philosophy at Loyola University, Chicago. Among his books are Platonic Transformations, with and after Hegel, Heidegger and Levinas; Beyond: The Philosophy of Emanuel Levinas; The Quest for Meaning: Friends of Wisdom from Plato to Levinas (Fordham); and Thinking: From Solitude to Dialogue and Contemplation (Fordham).