Self-Presentation

Abstract

Claude Lévi-Strauss has said that there is a reason why some people become anthropologists and travel to far-off lands. Perhaps there is also a reason why some people become philosophers and engage in far-out reflections. If there is, it was no doubt in my case the desire of an adolescent who felt himself somewhat adrift in the universe to see things whole, to uncover some order, unity, or meaningful pattern of relationships among things and events, to come to some more or less clear understanding of what it means to be. Like James Joyce who set out at a young age “to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience,” this led me at the age of twenty-four to emigrate to France, where I lived for six years, moving subsequently to Canada, carrying on in my own way the great mid-western tradition of expatriateship.

Date of birth: September 13, 1940.

Place of birth: Kankakee, Illinois.

Date and institution of highest degree: Ph.D., University of Paris, 1968,

Academic appointments: University of Nantes; University of Paris; St. Joseph’s College (Indiana); University of Toronto; and McMaster University