Saint Louis University 철학과에 재직 중인 마이클 D. 바버(Michael D. Baber) 교수님께 Ph.D. 컨택 메일을 보냈더니 답장을 주셨네요.
보낸 메일
Dear Professor Michael D. Barber
I am a South Korean student who majored in philosophical hermeneutics at Sogang University, Seoul.
2 years ago, I read your article, "Radical Reflection: Brandom and McDowell on Perception" and your book, The Intentional Spectrum and Intersubjectivity very impressively. At the time, I was writing an article about the differences between McDowell's and Brandom's concept of the perceptual experience, and your texts are really helpful for me not only to distinguish their main philosophical points but also to connect Neo-Hegelian thoughts to phenomenological tradition (including Merleau-Ponty and Levinas). I thought that your article and book are the most informative and comprehensive among the texts I have ever read about the relationship of the phenomenological tradition and the Pittsburgh Neo-Hegelianism.
Because you are an authoritative scholar who can deal with phenomenology and Neo-Hegelianism, I would like to earn a Ph.D. under you at Saint Louis University. To briefly introduce myself, I graduated from Sogang University with an undergraduate degree in philosophy and in religious studies and a master's degree in philosophy. Though I majored in Gadamer's hermeneutics in my master's degree, I always interested in understanding phenomenological-hermeneutic topics (intentionality, prejudice, otherness, etc.) with analytic tools and skills more explicitly. Especially, in my opinion, the Pittsburgh school of philosophy seems important to develop hermeneutic thoughts because they give a lot of useful insights to the problem of subjectivity and objectivity, the dialectic structure of experience, and the significance of language in our understanding──which are the main topics of phenomenological-hermeneutic tradition. I have written 5 published articles so far in Korean:
- "Language in Clash and Creation: Gadamer and Later Wittgenstein's World as Language" (2015)
- "Spirituality and Healing: Groundwork of the Concept of Spirituality for 'the Philosophy of Healing'" (2015, with my academic adviser Luis Byoung Jun Park, S.J.)
- "Representationalism, Dialectic, Historicity: A Critique of the Representationalism on the Basis of Hegel's Concept of Experience" (2016)
- "Is There Resistance of Reality?: A Critique of the Objective World in Habermas' Formal Pragmatics" (2017)
- "Mediated Immediacy: The Debate between McDowell and Brandom on the Conceptual Character of Perceptual Experience" (2018)
I currently plan to apply for Ph.D. programs, and Saint Louis is one of my most desired universities. I'd like to inquire whether you are currently accepting graduate students. If you are, I will do my best to prepare applications for Saint Louis University.
I will be very grateful if you answer me. But I know that you must be very busy, so I appreciate any time you can give me. I hope you don't mind responding to me.
Thank you for reading my E-mail.
Sincerely,
Y. Youn
받은 메일
Dear Mr. Youn,
Thank you for your kind message. I am happy to hear that my work was helpful to you. I am also happy to hear about your own publications. If any of them are published in English, I would be happy to receive a copy, since unfortunately I do not read Korean. It would be a pleasure to work with you as you work toward completing at Ph.D. Here is the difficulty: we have already accepted our graduate class for next fall (only 2 months away). I don't know if there is any money available to support your being a graduate student this academic year. Usually students apply for fellowships by January of the year before they hope to begin in August of that same year. We notify students of acceptance usually in March or early April. My recommendation, if you were thinking about trying to begin a Ph.D. this August, would be to write Dr. Scott Ragland (scott.ragland@slu.edu) who is the chair of our department and who knows all about funding and available positions. Just mention that you and I communicated. Thank you. Best wishes to you in your future work.
Michael Barber, SJ
Michael D. Barber, Ph.D.
Department of Philosophy
Saint Louis University
Adorjan Hall 130
3800 Lindell Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63108
314-977-3155
michael.barber@slu.edu
그동안 책에서 접하던 외국 교수님께 직접 메일을 받으니 굉장히 신기하네요. 몇 년 전에 바버 교수님과 렉 교수님이 피츠버그 학파의 철학에 대해 서로 논쟁한 내용을 찾아 읽으면서 '이 사람들은 나랑 동떨어진 엄청난 세계에서 사는 것 같다.'라는 생각을 했거든요.
함께 공부할 수 있는 환경
잡념과 공상 : 네이버 블로그
솔직히 컨택 메일을 보내놓고서도 답장을 받을 거라는 기대는 하지 않고 있었는데, 메일을 보낸지 30분만에 답장이 와서 놀랐습니다. 답장을 받았다는 사실만으로도 부족한 영어실력으로 고민하면서 메일을 쓴 보람이 있네요. 내년 초에 Saint Louis University에 꼭 지원해야겠습니다.
*와, 그런데 외국 대학 홈페이지 하나하나 확인해서 원서 준비하는 거 정말 어렵고 번거롭네요. 유학 가신 분들, 존경스럽습니다.
