Steven Cahn and Maureen Eckert's Introduction to FREEDOM AND THE SELF

INTRODUCTION STEVEN M. CAHN AND MAUREEN ECKERT

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ike Mary Ann (or Marian) Evans, better known as George Eliot, who translated Spinoza’s monumental Ethica, Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata, and T. S. Eliot, who was o ered a faculty position in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University, David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) was a major literary gure who also excelled in philosophy.

The son of the noted philosopher James D. Wallace, who taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, David Foster Wallace, like his father, was graduated from Amherst College, receiving a BA degree summa cum laude in 1985 with majors in both English and philosophy. His honors thesis in English was published two years later as his rst novel, The Broom of the System; his honors thesis in philosophy, titled “Richard Taylor’s ‘Fatalism’ and the Semantics of Physical Modality” was published in 2011 by Columbia University Press as the centerpiece of a collection we edited titled Fate, Time, and Language.

The preface to that book concluded with the hope that Wallace’s arguments “will be taken seriously and subjected to careful scrutiny.” The original essays in this volume provide such assessments of Wallace’s philosophical thought, whether in his monograph on fatalism or his other works.

Our rst three contributors consider in detail Wallace’s analysis of Richard Taylor’s controversial 1962 essay, “Fatalism,” in which

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Taylor maintains that, when suitably connected, six presuppositions widely accepted by contemporary philosophers imply the fatalistic conclusion that we have no more control over future events than we have now over past ones. (Taylor’s article and the spate of replies it engendered can be found in our Fate, Time, and Language.)

William Hasker considers the semantic system developed by Wallace to be a “splendid achievement” but doubts Wallace’s claim to have demonstrated a new objection to Taylor’s reasoning.

Hasker, however, also believes that a contemporary philosophy of time known as eternalism, which leaves no room in the world for alternative possibilities, poses a threat to freedom, thus suggesting the importance of continuing to explore the issues that concerned Taylor and Wallace.

Gila Sher admires “the richness and inventiveness” of Wallace’s work and judges that it “sets a new standard for a future defense of Taylor’s argument.” She believes that Wallace anticipated ideas published almost two decades later by the philosopher of logic John McFarlane, who has argued that truth depends on a context of assessment.

M. Oreste Fiocco describes Wallace’s discussion as “sophisticated” and “important” but claims that, like other critics of Taylor, Wallace failed to appreciate that Taylor’s argument has the form of a reductio ad absurdum: assuming the truth of his opponents’ position, showing its unacceptable consequences, and thereby demonstrating its falsity. Whereas Wallace concluded by challenging Taylor to “do metaphysics, not semantics,” Fiocco responds that Taylor is o ering a metaphysical argument that defends the existence of contingencies, possibilities never realized but integral to the world.

STEVEN M. CAHN AND MAUREEN ECKERT

Maureen Eckert adapts Wallace’s semantic System J to the issue of whether time travel is possible. Drawing additionally on the work of David Lewis, she seeks to o er an account of how any apparent contradictions in the concept of time travel can be avoided. She leaves open whether Wallace would have considered this feature of his system to be a “bug” or a positive implication.

Daniel R. Kelly asks whether Wallace was a fox or a hedgehog.

Granted, he knew many things, but did his work also have a single overarching idea? Kelly nds such unity in Wallace’s concern for the importance of free choice, a theme that runs throughout this collection.

Freedom requires genuine alternatives, not only in action but, most importantly to Wallace, in the exercise of “some control over how and what you think” (This Is Water). A valuable education provides the self with the power to choose with awareness what has meaning while “really good ction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it’d nd a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it” (Review of Contemporary Fiction 13, no. 2).

Taking the latter theme as their starting point, Nathan Ballantyne and Justin Tosi consider Wallace’s view of the good life.

In their discussion they refer to the work of numerous contemporary philosophers, including Richard Rorty, Galen Strawson, Christine Korsgaard, Charles Tayor, J. David Velleman, David Schmidtz, and Kurt Baier. Some may be surprised to see these names mentioned in a discussion of the thought of David Foster Wallace. Such a juxtaposition, however, would be expected by anyone who appreciates Wallace’s talents as not only a writer but also a philosopher.

We are grateful to our editor, Wendy Lochner, for her guidance and encouragement, and to assistant editor Christine Dunbar for her critical role in bringing the project to fruition. We also

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appreciate the care provided by our manuscript editor, Robert Fellman, as well as the e orts throughout the production made by the sta at Columbia University Press. Above all, we thank the devoted scholars whose insightful contributions have made this volume possible.