Doing Philosophy Personally

Title Page, Copyright

Download PDF (41.1 KB)
pp. i-viii

Contents

Download PDF (32.5 KB)
pp. ix-x

Preface

Download PDF (39.6 KB)
pp. xi-xiv

A warning: If you are here to read a scholarly treatise on Gabriel Marcel’s religious existentialism or on Lewis R. Gordon’s Africana existentialism, then you are reading the wrong book. Please don’t misunderstand me. Yes, this book is a scholarly text. I summarize Marcel’s religious existentialism in the first three chapters of this book. I also summarize Gordon’s notion of teleologically suspending...

Acknowledgments

Download PDF (39.3 KB)
pp. xv-xviii

First, I would like to thank Bill Lawson for convincing me in a conversation we had during the 2007 Philosophical Collaborations conference at Southern Illinois University Carbondale that I should be comfortable stating the thesis of this book as I initially envisioned it: This book is an effort to interpret Gabriel Marcel’s reflective method in terms of Lewis R. Gordon’s notion of the ...

Introduction

Download PDF (92.1 KB)
pp. 1-18

I occupy many social roles and have undergone many life-shaping events. I am the youngest son of the late James R. Tunstall and Delsie M. Tunstall; the father of two sons, Anthony Elijah and Christopher James; the husband of Crystal Nicole Scott-Tunstall; the uncle of eight surviving nieces and nephews, one of whom has a few children...

One Marcel’s Reflective Method

Download PDF (85.2 KB)
pp. 19-33

Gabriel Marcel’s theistic philosophy traditionally has been labeled as a form of religious existentialism. While this is an accurate description of Marcel’s philosophy, I prefer to describe his philosophy as a sort of reflective method. This way of describing his philosophy allows us to trace it back to its Kantian transcendentalist roots. Once we recognize the Kantian transcendentalist roots of...

Two Transcending Philosophy by Teleologically Suspending Philosophy

Download PDF (108.6 KB)
pp. 34-56

In this chapter I will examine how Marcel refines his reflective method, especially the dialectical relation between primary reflection and secondary reflection, over the course of his career. To per-form this task, I will assess how Gabriel Marcel refines his reflective method, especially the dialectical relation between primary reflection and secondary reflection, over the course of his career. First, I trace...

Three Living in a Broken World

Download PDF (109.2 KB)
pp. 57-79

One could interpret Gabriel Marcel’s religious existentialism, or what I prefer to calls his reflective method, as being founded upon at least two extraphilosophical commitments. First, Marcel’s religious insight where the highest ontological exigency for human persons is to participate in being.¹ Second, his reflective method is an outgrowth of his struggle against the ever-present specter of ...

Four Lewis Gordon on Antiblack Racism

Download PDF (101.0 KB)
pp. 80-100

To understand why I criticize Marcel’s religious existentialism for neglecting one of the most prominent forms of depersonalization in the twentieth century, antiblack racism, I should summarize Gordon’s existential phenomenological account of antiblack racism.However, it is not within the purview of this chapter to examine Gordon’s Africana existential phenomenological account of anitblack...

Five Criticizing Marcel’s Reflective Method

Download PDF (76.1 KB)
pp. 101-112

Given that Marcel asserts that one of a philosopher’s fundamental commitments is to ‘‘condemn absolutely every kind of racism,’’¹ how is it possible for Marcel himself to neglect the depersonalizing effects of antiblack racism on Africana persons in his sociopolitical thought? Did not Marcel condemn legalized segregation that African Americans suffered during the early 1960s throughout...

Conclusion

Download PDF (60.9 KB)
pp. 113-122

I think that we are now in a position to outline, in very broad strokes, a Marcellian reflective method that takes seriously Gordon’s existential phenomenological account of antiblack racism. Such a modified Marcellian reflective method is still a phenomenological metaphysics. What I mean by phenomenological metaphysics is a meta-physics in which one refuses to investigate the essential structures of...

Notes

Download PDF (153.4 KB)
pp. 123-154

Bibliography

Download PDF (102.6 KB)
pp. 155-172

Index

Download PDF (45.1 KB)
pp. 173-176

American Philosophy

Download PDF (35.6 KB)
pp. 177-180