Dr. Nathan Eric Dickman, associate professor of philosophy at University of the Ozarks, recently had his third book “Interpretation: A Critical Primer,” come out in print and available to order.
Dickman, who joied the Ozarks faculty in 2020, said the target audience for the book is students and that it completes what he calls his first “philosophical trilogy.”
“In my first book, I develop an account of reasoning, ‘Using Questions to Think,’ ” he said. “In this new book, I develop a theory of reading and interpretation. And in my second book, ‘Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Priority of Questions in Religions,’ I apply my accounts of reasoning and reading to the interpretation of religious texts. I designed this new book to be used as a textbook for the U of O course PHL 3213 Hermeneutic Philosophy and Interpretation.”
The book can be found here: Interpretation: A Critical Primer
Later this month, Dickman will be a main guest at book discussion panel at the North American Society for Philosophy Hermeneutics at the University of Calgary. The panel is devoted to Dickman’s second book, “Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Priority of Questions in Religions.”
“I have been an active member of this organization for many years,” he said. “ Since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, scholars across the planet have gathered together online every other month to engage one another in study and analysis of all aspects of interpretation theory and hermeneutics. To be a main guest at this upcoming conference is like a dream come true.”
More information on the book and conference: Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Priority of Questions in Religions; North American Society for Philosophy Hermeneutics.
In August, Dickman presented a research paper titled, “Confronting a Pernicious Misreading of Plato’s Cave,” for a conference devoted to teaching, co-sponsored by the American Association of Philosophy Teachers (AAPT) and Cogtweeto, a professional organization that grew out of discussions on Twitter.
“It was a great discussion of my argument that Plato’s cave is not something philosophers are to escape or to help others escape,” he said. “Instead, it is more like a description of a ‘lightbulb’ moment before the invention of lightbulbs. I have submitted a manuscript of this for publication with Teaching Philosophy.”
More information on the conference can be found here: conference.
Topics: Faculty Spotlights