Appraisal Special Issue, Spring 2020 The Common Good: An Introduction to Personalism
ISSN 1358-3336
Notes on Contributers
James Beauregard is a Lecturer in the psychology doctoral program at Rivier University, Nashua, New Hampshire, USA where he teaches Neuropsychology, Biological Bases of Behavior, Psychology Health Care Ethics and Aging. His research interests are in the fields of bioethics, neuroethics and personalist philosophy including the intersection of these areas as they impact our understandings of personhood. He is a member of the Spanish Personalist Association, the International Neuroethics Society and is on the board of directors of the International Conference on Persons.
John Hoffbauer is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, NY, where he has taught Philosophy for the last 16 years. While serving as Chairperson of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies during the last six years, he has also taught Logic, Medical Ethics, Contemporary Philosophy, and Philosophy of Science at this institution. In 2011, he served as the Chair of the 11th International Conference on Persons, in Provo, UT. Hofbauer has published a number of articles in peer-reviewed journals, made guest appearances on radio shows, and presented papers at multiple conferences. Currently, John resides in Woodcliff Lake, NJ, with his wife, Buena, and their six children.
Grzegorz Hołub is Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Cracow, Poland. His areas of research include bioethics, environmental ethics, and philosophy of the human person. He has published books on the concept of the person in the contemporary bioethics and on various particular problems of bioethics (“Problem osoby we współczesnych debatach bioetycznych”; “Osoba w labiryncie decyzji moralnych. Bioetykaw perspektywie personalistycznej”). He also works on the problem of human enhancement and as a result, he published a book concerning this topic (“Ulepszanie człowieka. Fikcja czy rzeczywistość. Argumenty, krytyka, poszukiwanie płaszczyzny dialogu”). He is additionally interested in the thought of Karol Wojtyła and currently resides in Cracow, Poland.
David Jewson gained his medical degree from Queens' College Cambridge and then Barts hospital. He has a lifelong interest in philosophy and theology and is particularly interested in people, in the idea that knowledge is personal, and that 'love' is important. His other main interest is metaphysics. He is a member of the British Personalist Forum, who have been a great support to him and helped develop his ideas, as most of all he enjoys finding out about things.
Teresita Pumará was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She studied Philosophy at Buenos Aires University (UBA) with special emphasis on Phenomenology and Post-structuralism. During her studies, she participated in the making of a volume about Philosophical Confessions, published an article on the absence of the body in Heidegger, and graduated with a dissertation on the relations between Antonin Artaud and Foucault, Derrida, Merlau-Ponty and Deleuze (all in Spanish). Then she moved to Colombia, where she did a lot of reading and writing and singing. In 2016 she moved to Germany, where she still does a lot of reading and writing and also studies translation of literature. She occasionally contributes to the British Personalist Forum blog and recently participated with short science fiction story in the KommaG Interdisciplinary Conference on the Relations of Humans, Machines and Gender, which will be published in the Conference’s volume in November 2020.
Nathan Riley teaches philosophy at St. John’s River College and Florida St. College Jacksonville. His interests include German Idealism, Marxism and Latin Literature. He enjoys helping students develop their philosophical viewpoints. Simon Smith has been the editor of Appraisal for far too long now. He has edited two collections of essays, one with James Beauregard, entitled In the Sphere of the Personal: New Perspectives in the Philosophy of Persons (Vernon, 2016), and one with Anna Castriota, entitled Looking at the Sun: New Writings in Modern Personalism (Vernon, 2017). He has also published a monograph with a nice blue cover on the subject of applied metaphysics; the title is Beyond Realism: Seeking the Divine Other (Vernon, 2017) and it has recently come out in paperback. He runs the BPF blog, which he would like more people to read and more people to write for. But mostly read. When he gets five minutes to himself, he thinks about the alignment of science and religion via the personal analogies at work in modern physics and modern metaphysics and tries not to think about the likelihood of the world ending before he finishes his next book.
David Treanor is a Research Associate at the School of Humanities in the University of Tasmania. He is also the National Coordinator for L’Arche in Australia and New Zealand. He graduated in social work in the UK and has also completed a Master of Public Administration. David completed his PhD dissertation through the School of Philosophy at the University of Tasmania. His thesis presents a revised and richer understanding of friendship that contributes to improving our understanding of human nature. His areas of academic interest are: Ability & Disability; Care Ethics; Community, John Macmurray and Innovation.
Lucy Weir has spent several decades thinking and writing about what it means to live a 'good' life. She lived in a refugee camp in Kenya (where she worked as a volunteer and did research) for a year, as well as having volunteered and lived in Sudan until she was expelled during the first Gulf War, and in Indonesia until she was asked to leave for being female (I was working in an Islamic university in Kalimantan Timur). She has lived in a caravan park, and in a derelict house, and she has worked as a motorcycle courier and as an artist's model (among other things). In short, she has survived, having been through boarding school abuse, and managing to raise two children in the west of Ireland on almost no income. She now teaches yoga and philosophy on a freelance basis, and is working on her second book, a collection of pieces on the practice of philosophy in the ecological emergency. Her PhD links our attitude to the ecological emergency with a reassessment of the implications of evolutionary biology and systems theory, and her book explores this further (Love is Green: compassion as responsibility in the ecological emergency, Vernon Press, 2020). She lives with her partner in County Cork.
