Modernity has radically challenged the assumptions that guide our ordinary lives as persons, in ways we are not normally aware. We live our concrete lives taking for granted that personal decisions, desires, relationships, actions, aspirations, values, and knowledge are central to our existence. But in modernity, we think of these matters as private, idiosyncratic, and subjective, even irrational. This modern conception of ourselves and the associated way of reflection known as modern critical thinking came to dominate our thinking is culminates in the dualistic philosophy of Rene Descartes. This dualism has spawned a reductionist view of persons and tainted "the personal" with connotations of bias, partiality, and privacy, leaving us with the presumption that if we seek to be objective and intellectually respectable, we must expunge the personal. William H. Poteat's work in philosophical anthropology has confronted this concern head on. He undertakes a radical critique of the various forms of mind-body dualism and materialist monism that have dominated Western intellectual concepts of the person. In a unique style that Poteat calls post-critical, he uncovers the staggering incoherencies of these dualisms and shows how they have resulted in a loss of the personal in the modern age. He also formulates a way out of this modern cultural insanity. This constructive dimension of his thought is centered on his signature concept of the mindbody, the pre-reflective ground of personal existence. The twelve contributors in this collection explore outgrowths and implications of Poteat's thought. Recovering the Personal will be of interest to a broad range of intellectual readers with interests in philosophy, psychology, theology, and the humanities.

Building upon the scholarship of Michael Polanyi, William Poteat has dedicated himself to offering an alternative model to the Cartesian dichotomy of mind and matter that has dominated Western thought for centuries. These essays, collected by James Nickell and James Stines, cover a wide range of subjects, from Poteat's analysis of the epistemological crisis brought on by the Cartesian program to his first attempts at formulating an alternative to the mind-body dichotomy.

These essays relentlessly diagnose the present situation of Western thought by making explicit the philosophical presuppositions to which it is committed. They include theological affirmations, reflections on epistemology, conceptual analyses, as well as dialogues with other writers in the field of cultural criticism and linguistic theory such as George Steiner, Noam Chomsky, and Walker Percy. Most significant is Poteat's bold affirmation of the primacy of persons and his analysis and critique of our cultural misconstructions of human awareness.

"The Primacy of Persons and the Language of Culture" provides an excellent introduction to the scholarship of William Poteat. It should be of particular interest to scholars of philosophy and theology, as well as others who share Poteat's deep concern for the state of human culture.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The above was already on the database - below was copied from the web

William Poteat has dedicated himself to offering an alternative model to the Cartesian dichotomy of mind and matter that has dominated Western thought for centuries. These essays further diagnose the present situation of Western thought by making explicit the philosophical presuppositions to which it is committed.