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Heidegger LiederDissertation, Vanderbilt University. 1995.This dissertation travels three routes. First, it explores the logic of Heidegger's readings. Second, it relates that logic to Heidegger's more radical remarks on the abysmal aspects of being, language, and history. Third, it examines those readings in light of Heidegger's belief that poetry promises a future at the end of metaphysics. In the first three chapters, I explain Heidegger's approach to poetic texts on the basis of two central claims. First, Heidegger's position on matters of poetics …Read more
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23Hope, Trust, and Forgiveness: Essays in FinitudeUniversity of Chicago Press. 2023.A new ethics of human finitude developed through three experimental essays. As ethical beings, we strive for lives that are meaningful and praiseworthy. But we are finite. We do not know, so we hope. We need, so we trust. We err, so we forgive. In this book, philosopher John T. Lysaker draws our attention to the ways in which these three capacities—hope, trust, and forgiveness—contend with human limits. Each experience is vital to human flourishing, yet each also poses significant personal and i…Read more
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31Turning Listening Inside Out: Brian Eno's Ambient 1: Music for AirportsJournal of Speculative Philosophy 31 (1): 155-176. 2017.Brian Eno's Ambient 1: Music for Airports is a seminal album in the history of electronic music. Using Deleuze and Guattari's notion of the assemblage, I explore the album's compositional structure as well as its ambient function, by attending to specific tracks and locating the album in musical history, particularly relative to the work of John Cage, La Monte Young, and Steve Reich. In an extended discussion of its ambient function, I argue that the LP offers music for reverie that is capable o…Read more
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88Schizophrenia and the experience of intersubjectivity as threatPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4 (3): 335-352. 2005.Many with schizophrenia find social interactions a profound and terrifying threat to their sense of self. To better understand this we draw upon dialogical models of the self that suggest that those with schizophrenia have difficulty sustaining dialogues among diverse aspects of self. Because interpersonal exchanges solicit and evoke movement among diverse aspects of self, many with schizophrenia may consequently find those exchanges overwhelming, resulting in despair, the sensation of fusion wi…Read more
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3Like a Bird on a Wire: Freedom to Be FreeJournal of Speculative Philosophy 36 (4): 476-490. 2022.ABSTRACT Against a Kantian notion of freedom as autonomy, this article defends a conception of freedom that is relational, dependent, and experimental, and that operates without anything like a will. In the author’s view, freedom is a characteristic of a relation between a person and the world that allows for the predictable realization of specified ends, that is, a mode of power.
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8After EmersonIndiana University Press. 2017.Where do we find ourselves? -- Not with syllables but men -- Essaying America -- Living multiplicity: a matter of course -- Emerson, race, and the conduct of life -- Reforming ethical life -- Emerson and the case of philosophy -- Abbreviations for Emerson's works.
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2Philosophy, Writing, and the Character of ThoughtUniversity of Chicago Press. 2018.Gambits and gambles -- Iron filings -- Pardon the interruption -- Content and form -- Form and content -- In the beginning was the deed -- Reworking making -- Deliberate writing -- Mistaking instrumental reason -- Fits and starts -- A cultivar -- Quotation beyond quotas -- For examples -- In nuce -- Irony -- Message in a bottle -- The hour of the wolf -- It's the gesture that counts -- Furnishing the space of reasons -- A struggle with ourselves -- Who's on first -- Every one is everybody -- The…Read more
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20Looking After the Future: Notes on HopeJournal of Speculative Philosophy 33 (2): 238-255. 2019.ABSTRACT Hope is a complex social-psychological phenomenon. It combines cognitive and affective dimensions, and it is temporally extended, drawing upon the past in order to orient the present toward the future. In conversation with various texts, ranging from Ernst Bloch to Cornel West to Patrick Shade, the article offers a multidimensional account of hope, arguing that it is integral to human action and possibility.
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43The Stars Down to Earth and Other Essays on the Irrational in Culture (review)The Personalist Forum 12 (2): 183-186. 1996.
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4Rorty and Pragmatism (review)Newsletter of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy 24 (75): 6-7. 1996.
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16You Must Change Your Life: Poetry, Philosophy, and the Birth of SensePennsylvania State University Press. 2002.In this book, inspired by Martin Heidegger--who found in poetry the most fundamental insights into the human condition--John Lysaker develops a concept of ur-poetry to explore philosophically how poetic language creates fresh meaning in our ...
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25Rorty and Pragmatism (review)Newsletter of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy 24 (75): 6-7. 1996.
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6You Must Change Your Life: Poetry, Philosophy, and the Birth of SensePennsylvania State University Press. 2008.Some poems can change our lives; they lead us to look at the world through new eyes. In this book, inspired by Martin Heidegger—who found in poetry the most fundamental insights into the human condition—John Lysaker develops a concept of ur-poetry to explore philosophically how poetic language creates fresh meaning in our world and transforms the way in which we choose to live in it. Not limited to a single poem or collection of poems, ur-poetry arises when, in the interaction of an author's pri…Read more
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49Metacognition, selfexperience and the prospect of enhancing selfmanagement in schizophrenia spectrum disordersPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 24 (2): 169-178. 2017.In general, current biomedical models of schizophrenia focus on distinguishing discrete elements that, on their own or in combination with others, might lead to some form of disability. These different and potentially autonomous aspects of the disorder that might disrupt daily activities include positive and negative symptoms as well as disturbances in neurocognitive and psychobiological processes. Such disturbances include genetic vulnerabilities that increase the risk of abnormalities in brain…Read more
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44Relentless unfolding: Emerson's individualJournal of Speculative Philosophy 17 (3): 155-163. 2003.Amid its romantic excesses such as "[t]o believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men,—that is genius" (Porte 2001, 121), Emersonian individualism remains a living project, one we would do well to understand more thoroughly and pursue more rigorously. To aid in this recovery, I will, in a translating repetition of Emerson's thought that engages a range of texts, offer eight theses that any successful reconstruction of individualism mus…Read more
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42On What Is to Be Done with What Is Always Already ArrivingStudies in Practical Philosophy 1 (1): 86-113. 1999.
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62The shape of selves to come: Rorty and self-creationPhilosophy and Social Criticism 22 (3): 39-74. 1996.Through a critique of Richard Rorty, I develop a program of self-creation. While Rorty rightly encourages ironic and poetic redescriptions, his feel for this work is disembodied and context-blind. In contrast, I propose an institutionally situated and full-bodied creative exercise which contextually reworks central tropes. Rorty's position is also overly privatized. This hinders 'public' discourse and imprisons marginalized persons within institutionalized identities. Self-creation should not be…Read more
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36Emerson and Thoreau: Figures of Friendship (edited book)Indiana University Press. 2010.This lively volume explores the theme of friendship in the lives and works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
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A liberal sense of alterityIn Steven Shankman & Massimo Lollini (eds.), Who, exactly, is The Other?: Western and transcultural perspectives: a collection of essays, University of Oregon Books/university of Oregon Humanities Center. 2002.
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28Binding the Beautiful: Art as Criticism in Adorno and DeweyJournal of Speculative Philosophy 12 (4). 1998.
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22Emerson and Self-CultureIndiana University Press. 2008.How do I live a good life, one that is deeply personal and sensitive to others? John T. Lysaker suggests that those who take this question seriously need to reexamine the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson. In philosophical reflections on topics such as genius, divinity, friendship, and reform, Lysaker explores "self-culture" or the attempt to remain true to one's deepest commitments. He argues that being true to ourselves requires recognition of our thoroughly dependent and relational nature. Lysaker …Read more
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28Overcoming fragmentation in the treatment of persons with schizophreniaJournal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 37 (1): 21-33. 2017.
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13Finding My Way through Moral SpaceEpoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 17 (1): 143-154. 2012.The ongoing task of self-discovery, which I figure as self-finding, following Emerson, is integral to the human condition. While its results are always fragmentary, self-finding also conducts the currents of life in ways that establish conditions for our lives and those of others. This activity is mistakenly constrained by Charles Taylor, who argues that it remains tied to moral space. Charles Scott’s work shows how moral space can be found in a manner that suspends the necessity of moral space …Read more
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