UB Alums and colleagues contribute essays for publication

Bridges: In Honor of Kah Kyung Cho

Bridges: In Honor of Kah Kyung Cho.

On the occasion of commemorating service to a Department and a University which ran for almost fifty years, that had its start at a time of the anti-war movement and the student protests of the late 1960s, and ended at the time of digital globalization and economic precarity of the late 2010s, it is worth remembering Professor Kah Kyung Cho’s turbulent beginings. It may well be said that his early life was determined by such a series of rare events, and strokes of good fortune, which one encounters only in the fictional world of a novel. But, at the same time, Prof. Cho’s life tale was the offspring of a different era, an era that seems today a distant past, when hardship, insecurity, danger, and eventually chance, ruled. Read more.

This webpage features the contributors and their essays in the forthcoming publication, Bridges: In Honor of Kah Kyung Cho.  

Bridges: In Honor of Kah Kyung Cho

Kah Kyung Cho, PhD.

Kah Kyung Cho, PhD

Contact

For further information on the publication, Bridges: In Honor of Kah Kyung Cho, contact:

  • Thanos Spiliotakaras, Co-Editor <aspiliot@buffalo.edu> 
  • Justin Murray,  Co-Editor <jmurray9@buffalo.edu> 

INTRODUCTION by co-editors Thanos Spiliotakaras and Justin Murray

On the occasion of commemorating service to a Department and a University which ran for almost fifty years, that had its start at a time of the anti-war movement and the student protests of the late 1960s, and ended at the time of digital globalization and economic precarity of the late 2010s, it is worth remembering Professor Kah Kyung Cho’s turbulent beginings. It may well be said that his early life was determined by such a series of rare events, and strokes of good fortune, which one encounters only in the fictional world of a novel. But, at the same time, Prof. Cho’s life tale was the offspring of a different era, an era that seems today a distant past, when hardship, insecurity, danger, and eventually chance, ruled.

CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS

Eric Chelstrom, PhD — Cho as Mentor

Eric Chelstrom, PhD.

Eric Chelstrom, PhD

Eric Chelstrom, PhD, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Edward and Linda Speed Peace and Justice Fellow, St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas.

Dissertation: Intersubjectivity: A Phenomenological Contribution to Collective Intentionality (2010).

Bio: Eric Chelstrom is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas. He was the campus’s Edward and Linda Speed Peace and Justice Fellow for the 2016-2017 academic year. His research has moved from general questions about collective intentionality and phenomenology to issues of how oppression and systematic injustice force us to revise how we think about collective intentionality and how horizon intentionality functions in such cases. He’s serves as the St. Mary’s chapter advisor to Phi Sigma Tau and has been their Ethics Bowl coach. He is the author of Social Phenomenology (Lexington, 2012) and several articles and book chapters. A revised (and improved) version of his dissertation was published as Social Phenomenology: Husserl, Intersubjectivity, and Collective Intentionality by Lexington Books in 2012. 

Craig Clifford, PhD — Philosophical Memories: Buffalo, Germany, Texas

Craig Clifford, PhD.

Craig Clifford, PhD

Craig Clifford,PhD, Professor of Philosophy, Tarleton State University

Dissertation supervised by Professor Kah Kyung Cho: On the essence and danger of technology: Plato on sophistic technique and Heidegger on modern technology (1981)

Bio: DR. CRAIG CLIFFORD did his undergraduate work in Plan II (the liberal arts honors program) at the University of Texas at Austin with a concentration in philosophy. He completed his PhD in philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1981, writing a dissertation on Plato and Martin Heidegger under Professor Kah-Kyung Cho. He studied German and attended lectures on Plato by Professor Emeritus Hans-Georg Gadamer in Heidelberg, Germany, in the summer of 1978.

Seon-Wook Kim, PhD — My Memory of Professor Cho’s Existential Philosophy

Seon-Wook Kim, PhD.

Seon-Wook Kim, PhD

Seon-Wook Kim, PhD, Dean, College of Humanities, and Professor, Department of Philosophy, Soongsil University, Korea

Dissertation: Judgment and Communicative Rationality: A Study of the Political Philosophy of Hannah Arendt and Juergen Habermas (1999).

Further information forthcoming.

Seung-Chong Lee, PhD — Naturalist Transversal of Deconstructionism: Chuang-Tzu, Derrida, and Wittgenstein

Seung-Chong Lee, PhD.

Seung-Chong Lee, PhD

Seung-Chong Lee, PhD, Professor of philosophy, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea

Dissertation supervised by Newton Garver: Wittgenstein's Attitude Toward Contradiction (1993).

Bio: Seung-Chong Lee received his Ph.D. at UB in 1993. Late Dr. Newton Garver was his supervisor, and Dr. Kah Kyung Cho was a member of his dissertation committee. His dissertation thesis, "Wittgenstein's Attitude Toward Contradiction" was chosen by the UB philosophy department as the winner of the Perry Award for Best Dissertation. Currently, he is a professor of philosophy at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. He co-authored with late Newton Garver, <Derrida and Wittgenstein>(Temple University Press, 1994) and translated it into Korean, as well as three works in Korean: <If Wittgenstein Were Alive>(2002), <Crossing Over Heidegger>(2010) and <From East Asian Thoughts>(2018). He translated Wittgenstein’s <Philosophical Investigations>(2016) into Korean with the translator's introduction and expansive running commentaries.

 

Douglas Low, PhD — Merleau-Ponty, Modernism, Structure, and Postmodernism*

Douglas Low, PhD.

Douglas Low, PhD

Douglas Low, PhD, Library Faculty Emeritus, University of West Florida

Dissertation: The Existential Dialectic of Marx and Merleau-Ponty (1985)

Bio: Douglas Low wrote his humanities M.A. thesis entitled “Husserl’s Phenomenology and Philosophical Materialism,” under the guidance of Professor Kah Kyung Cho in 1975, State University of New York at Buffalo. He later completed a Ph.D. in philosophy under the direction of Professor Harold Durfee in 1985, The American University, Washington, D.C.  His dissertation was later published as a book entitled The Existential Dialectic of Marx and Merleau-Ponty. He served as a philosophy faculty at Urbana University of Ohio from 1987 to 2000, attaining the rank of full professor of philosophy in May 2000. While at Urbana University he received an award for teaching excellence in philosophy from Southwestern Ohio Council for Higher Education in 1997. After pursuing his interest in computers and information science, he continued his career at the University of West Florida as a library faculty and a reference librarian, retiring in 2013. His publications, including four books and over twenty-five scholarly articles, are listed here.

 

Mark Meli, PhD — Japan, Kah-Kyung Cho, and I

Bridges.

Bridges

Mark Meli, PhD, Professor, General Department of Humanities, Department of Cross-Cultural Studies, Kansai University, Japan

Dissertation:  (1997)

Justin Murray, ABD, Co-editor, Introduction

Bridges.

Bridges

Further information forthcoming.

Hans Rainer Sepp, PhD — My Encounter with Kah Kyung Cho and the Foundation of the Orbis Phaenomenologicus

Hans Rainer Sepp, PhD.

Hans Rainer Sepp, PhD

Hans Rainer Sepp, PhD, Professor, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, in Prague, Czech Republic; Director, Central European Institute of Philosophy, Czech Republic, together with Karel Novotný.

Bio: Hans Rainer Sepp, PhD, is dealing with a genealogical theory of conceptions of knowing in intercultural respects overlapping areas of philosophy, science, religion, and art realized in the context of a renewed phenomenology of corporeity as the basis of an interdisciplinary as well intercultural oikological philosophy. Together with Kah Kyung Cho and Yoshihiro Nitta he founded and edits the book series Orbis Phaenomenologicus. His most recent book publications include Philosophie der imaginären Dinge (2017) and In. Grundrisse der Oikologie (2020).

 

 

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Thanos Spiliotakaras, ABD, Co-Editor, Introduction

Bridges.

Bridges

Thanos Spiliotakaras is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University at Buffalo. He is currently composing a dissertation on Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment. Before joining the University at Buffalo, he completed a BA at the University of Athens, Greece, and a research MSc at the University of Edinburgh,UK. His research interests include Kant, Hegel, German Idealism, Aesthetics, 19th and 20th century continental philosophy. 

Tani Toru, PhD — Person and Culture

Bridges.

Bridges

Tani Toru, PhD, ProfessorCollege of Letters/Human Studies Program, Ritsumeikan University, Japan

Further information forthcoming.

Bernhard Waldenfels, PhD — Note of Remembrance

Bridges.

Bridges

Bernhard Waldenfels, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany

Bio: Dr. h. c. Bernhard Waldenfels has been teaching as Visiting Professor in Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Louvain-la-Neuve, New York, Prague, Rome, and Vienna. He is co-founder of the German Society for Phenomenological Research.

Photo Gallery

Kah Kyung Cho (right) with Martin Heidegger, 1957. Cho's study, 'Ecological Suggestibility in Heidegger's Later Philosophy,' first presented to the General Society of Philosophy in Germany (1983), had repercussions by denying that Heidegger at any time intended to make a contribution to solving ecological problems. For 1929/30 was nearly half a century before the groundswell in public awareness of ecological crisis sent the Green Party into the German parliament. At that early date, Heidegger employed the word 'Ökologie' in his Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik lecture and defended the integrity and dignity of animal life. It was, as Cho has demonstrated, a corollary of Heidegger's ontological question and had nothing to do with Heidegger insinuating himself into any popular trend of time."

Professor Kah Kyung Cho (5th from left) with UB Philosophy students; further details forthcoming.

Professor Kah Kyung Cho (seated) with UB Philosophy students in 2019; further details forthcoming. Photograph courtesy Angela Menditto.