Brian Wayne Rogers

Drawing on great works in the Western philosophical tradition, with particular attention to works in existentialism, phenomenology, and hermeneutics, I pursue the question of what it means to be human. Along these lines, I am especially interested in the philosophical study of religion, that distinctively human desire for things eternal and divine. Such desire has profoundly shaped the world we inhabit. But is this mortal longing to bear the impress of the gods, the deepest, most profound expression of our freedom, or does it hinder that very freedom? Is reality a gift to be received? How could human beings be the recipients of the very meanings they actively unfold, even create? What, indeed, is the source of meaning and value, and does this source command something like our worship? My research responds to these and other, similar sorts of questions, which I think should form the basis of a philosophical anthropology.