Scholar’s Symposium: The Work of David Carr

Excerpt

The four essays collected here were presented orally at the 44th meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, in Salt Lake City, Utah, in October of 2005. The panel, “Scholar’s Session: David Carr,” was not just any SPEP panel. The four speakers—Edward Casey, Steven Crowell, Richard Kearney, and David Carr himself—have participated in and contributed to the SPEP conference for decades, as organizers, invited plenary speakers, commentators, loyal servants on the Executive Committee, and beyond such visible contributions, by mentoring their graduate students as they submitted and presented their first professional conference papers. Thus, this particular meeting (on a bright, crisp fall morning, against the backdrop of Utah’s desert landscape) felt a bit like a celebration, not only of the quality of David Carr’s scholarship over the course of his career, but also of old friendships and of the new friendships forged in the experience of teaching. Although presented as a retrospective, it was a celebration of the future of the Society and of the growth and complexification of a rich conversation about the phenomenology of history, a conversation which continues to engage new voices. …