APA Member Interview, Eva Dadlez

A philosopher and emerita professor describes a late start in philosophy, having taken no philosophy courses as an undergraduate. While completing a master’s in an unrelated field, her husband told her about his graduate-level aesthetics class, which she initially questioned with anger. She enrolled as an elective and experienced a revelation when familiar ways of thinking were presented as formal methodology. She then pursued a PhD, taking another graduate philosophy course as a test and gaining admission after a delay for funding. She remains especially focused on aesthetics. She is working on a book about Jane Austen and David Hume titled Mirrors to One Another, after earlier publication feedback suggested the topic was exhausted by a single article.

"In the beginning, nothing excited me about philosophy. I didn't take a single philosophy course as an undergrad. When I was doing a Masters in an entirely unrelated field, a friend (now my husband of nearly 50 years) told me about his graduate-level aesthetics class. "Wait. So these people think they can determine what art is without being able to draw their way out of a paper bag?" I asked in some umbrage."

"I took it as an elective (I had one elective course in my program, and I'd been hoarding it). The class was a revelation. When ways in which one has been thinking all along are presented as received methodology, there's a kind of stunned recognition that has a powerful impact. I was just angry with myself for having wasted so much time doing other, clearly less interesting, things. I applied to the PhD program."

"Aesthetics (insufficiently respected in the field, in my opinion) was and remains my first obsession. What are you working on right now? My Wiley-Blackwell book on Jane Austen and David Hume, Mirrors to One Another. I remember that I sent a proposal accompanied by the one thing on the subject I'd published to a few presses and was informed in kindly tones that it was a good paper, but that the subject matter was exhausted by the single article."

"So I took a sabbatical and wr"

Read at Apaonline