Kindness and the Good Society: Connections of the Heart

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments It would be the unkindest cut of all not to express my gratitude to several people and organizations that have helped me in various ways to complete this book. Sincere thanks are due, first, to Professor Wolfe Mays, Editor of the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, for permission to quote short passages from some of my articles published therein. They are listed in the Bibliography. I am also grateful to the Graduate School of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville for a summer research fellowship that provided the time to finally complete the book, and to the National Endowment for the Humanities for awarding me a place in Thomas Pavel’s 1996 summer seminar, “After Poststructuralism: The Individual in Contemporary French Thought,” at Princeton University. The influences of that seminar are present throughout the following pages. I am deeply indebted to Professor Pavel and my fellow seminar participants. I am likewise grateful to Eldora Spiegelberg, who has always been a fresh, instructive example of the fact that the life of kindness can mean a life worth living. To her, and to my parents, who both died during the writing of this book, this work is affectionately dedicated. I thank John Compton for his stimulating discussions of Philip Hallie’s reflections on cruelty and much else. I also am grateful to Ms. Dixie Golden for her expert proofreading. Additionally, I owe a great debt to my family, colleagues, and other friends, especially Michael Barber, Frank Flinn, James Marsh, and Thomas D. Paxson, Jr.They did not let me give up, even when I came close to death myself. They have taught me much about the importance of a community of good people for living a life of kindness, and I hope that they will find their lessons here well learned. While this book was in press, William Desmond’s Ethics and the Between (Albany : State University of New York Press, 2001) appeared.The present book offers a phenomenology of kindness which is, in several ways, consistent with the ontology of goodness which Desmond’s work provides. I regret that it was impossible to refer here to that book because the careful reader will note in both texts, albeit for different purposes, overlapping and complementary descriptions of human actions and values as well as similar concerns for ambiguity, perplexity , goodness, evil, and hermeneutical interrogation. Finally, the sad and horrible terrorism of September 11, 2001, which also took place while this book was in production, dramatically showed both the ix obstacles to, and the array of possibilities of, kindness and compassion in a world in violent struggle. In the extreme circumstances of destruction, shock, pain, and the disorienting awareness of unsuspected vulnerability, countless kind acts of strangers created and reinforced community not only in New York and Washington, but across the country as well. The achievement of goodness is indeed fragile, as Martha Nussbaum points out, but the tough resolve to reassert it gives one reasons for hope after all. I gratefully and humbly acknowledge that indomitable spirit. x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...