Walter Jay Lammi

Philosophy Unit
Dept. of English and Comparative Literature
The American University in Cairo
P.O. Box 2511
Cairo, Egypt
E-Mail: ABCD@acs.auc.eun.eg
Fax: 202-355-7565, Cairo, Egypt, c/o English Dept.

Education

• 1988 Bryn Mawr College Ph.D. in Philosophy.
  Dissertation title: "The Right-Heideggerian Legacy in America."
  Areas of Concentration: Pre-Socratics and Plato, Political Philosophy, Philosophy of History, Martin Heidegger
• 1987-1988 Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities
• 1976 M.A. in Political Science and Philosophy
• 1972-1973 North Carolina State University Graduate studies in Political Science
• 1969 Stanford University A.B. in History

Experience

• 1991-present -- The American University in Cairo Assistant Professor of Philosophy
• 1988-1991 -- College of San Mateo, De Anza College, Evergreen Valley College, Foothill College, Napa Valley College, San Jose City College, Santa Rosa Junior College, Skyline College/San Francisco State University, Stanford University Full-time equivalent Instructor
• 1984-1986 Hoover Institution, Stanford University Executive Editor, Hoover Institution Press
• 1980-1984 Institute for Contemporary Studies Editorial Director and Co-Editor, Journal of Contemporary Studies.
• 1978-1980 The Public Interest -- Assistant Editor
• 1977-1978 Rider University -- Adjunct Instructor, Dept. of Philosophy.
• 1974-1978 Bryn Mawr College -- Teaching and Research Assistant.
• 1970-1972 -- I.L.W.U. Warehouse and Factory Worker and Labor Union Organizer.
• Summers U.S. Bureau of Land Management 1966, 1967, 1969 -- Smokejumper.

Conference Papers

• "Philosophical Education and Sustainable Development," American University in Cairo Research Conference on Sustainable Development in Egypt, April 21, 1996, Cairo, Egypt.
• "The Hermeneutics of Ideological Indoctrination," Association for the Philosophy of Education, American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Meeting, Dec. 28, 1995, New York, NY
• "The Mediation of Hegel and Heidegger in Hermeneutical Experience," American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Meeting, Dec. 29, 1994, Boston, MA

Publications

• "The Hermeneutics of Ideological Indoctrination," Perspectives on Political Science, forthcoming (1997).
• "Hans-Georg Gadamer's Platonic Destruktion of the Later Heidegger," Philosophy Today, forthcoming (1997).
  • Abstract: Hans-Georg Gadamer has described himself as a "student of Heidegger" who has learned the "craft of classical philology." Using the modest, and moderate, language of Platonic scholarship, however, Gadamer has established himself as a preeminent philosopher of the twentieth century. Although the influence of Heidegger on Gadamer's interpretation of Plato has become a major topic of contemporary scholarship, the influence of Plato on Gadamer's interpretation of Heidegger remains unexplored. This article begins that exploration, with emphasis not on what Gadamer says explicitly about Heidegger, but on the tacit commentary of his own philosopical hermeneutics. My contention is that in effect Gadamer's work constitutes and early-Heideggerian Destruktion of the later Heidegger, reinscribing Heidegger's major post-Kehre themes with his own Platonic focus on the question of the human good--exactly where Heidegger went so disastrously astray.
• "Hegel, Heidegger, and Hermeneutical Experience," in Shaun Gallagher, ed., Hegel, History, and Interpretation (Albany: SUNY Press, forthcoming, 1997).
  • Abstract: Although Hans-Georg Gadamer has called the concept of 'experience' "one of the most obscure we have," and it is famously so in Hegeland Heidegger, 'experience' is also a key--perhaps the key--to understanding the philosophical relationship among these three thinkers. Playing an apparently mediating role between Hegel and Heidegger, Gadamer has been criticized for having a syncretist tendency to "pick and choose" among these thinkers to suit his own purposes, one result of which is to reassimilate Heidegger into traditional Western metaphysics. This paper answers this charge through a comparative study of philosophical 'experience' in Hegel, Heidegger, and Gadamer. I concludethat hermeneutical experience, taking its bearings from interpreting the tradition, is coherent as a phenomenological rather than syncretist concept.
• "Hans-Georg Gadamer's Correction' of Heidegger," Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 52, No. 3 (July-September 1991), 487-507.
• "Nietzsche, the Apaches, and Stanford: The Hidden Agenda of Education for Difference," Academic Questions, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Summer 1991), 29-40.