An Interview with John Russon

By Scott Marratto

With whom did you primarily study? Where?

My undergraduate studies at the University of Regina were primarily responsible for

shaping my mature views, and it was Eugene F. Bertoldi who had the most substantial

impact on me. Jay Lampert, with whom I was later a fellow doctoral student at the

University of Toronto, also taught for a year at the University of Regina, and he had an

enormous impact on my philosophical studies, and on my understanding of

phenomenology in particular. I left the University of Regina with a strong sense of the

vibrancy and the complementarity of Ancient Greek Philosophy, German Idealism and

Phenomenology. In my graduate work at the University of Toronto, Kenneth L. Schmitz

probably did the most to shape my views through his philosophically and textually

rigorous studies of Hegel’s Science of Logic in particular. H.S. Harris became a great

mentor and friend throughout the half-dozen years in which I attended his ongoing

seminar on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, and Graeme Nicholson, my dissertation

director, has been an ongoing influence in my study of Continental Philosophy. Though

those are the formal teachers with whom I “studied,” I generally, however, think the

ongoing engagement with students and colleagues in my professional life has provided at

least as much of an education. There would be no way, for example, for me to have done

the work I have done without the ongoing engagement I had with Maria Talero, Kym

Maclaren, David Ciavatta and David Morris, all of whom were students of mine when I

first taught at the University of Toronto, and the same is true for Kirsten Jacobson, Eric

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Sanday and Greg Recco at the Pennsylvania State University. My work has also been

substantially shaped by Gregory Nagy of Harvard University, with whom I did

postdoctoral research on Homer and Greek Literature, and by my colleagues over the 8

years I taught at the Penn State. At that time, Penn State was widely recognized as the

“flagship” department in North America for Continental Philosophy and also for

American Philosophy. I had the privilege of working with great scholars of Continental

Philosophy such as Joseph Kockelmans, Alphonso Lingis, Charles Scott, John Sallis and

such scholars of American Philosophy as John Stuhr, Vincent Colapietro and Doug

Anderson. My own thinking was deeply shaped by my dialogue with these figures. I

would also note Ed Casey and Len Lawlor as philosophers who have had a very

significant and ongoing influence on my education.

Has any particular aspect of the history of continental philosophy in Canada influenced

you?

Until the 1990s, the University of Toronto was an outstanding department for the study of

Continental Philosophy and for the history of Philosophy in general, unique in North

America—and perhaps even in the world—for its size and for the breadth and the quality

of its faculty resources. I completed my doctoral work there at the tail-end of this period,

and had the opportunity to study with the great scholars of Continental Philosophy I

mentioned earlier, and with such singular scholars of Greek Philosophy as Joseph Owens,

John Rist and Francis Sparshott, and with a host of other experts in Medieval Philosophy,

Early Modern Philosophy and more. In this way, the then-state of Continental

Philosophy in Canada offered a very positive influence. Subsequently, much the opposite

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has been true. After 1990, the University of Toronto largely abandoned its commitment

to Continental Philosophy and the History of Philosophy, and that was a real blow to

Continental Philosophy in Canada. Like many other Canadians, I spent a dozen years

working in the United States for want of job opportunities at Canadian Universities. I am

delighted now to be working at the University of Guelph, which currently is surely the

strongest department in Canada for the study of Continental Philosophy, and has become

one of the more important such departments in North America. I am also pleased that

some of the formerly lesser known schools in Toronto are becoming strong in Continental

Philosophy—Ryerson University and the Institute for Christian Studies in particular. In

fact, Toronto is again becoming a significant center for the study of Continental

Philosophy because of the wealth of strong scholars working in schools in the vicinity of

the city.

Are there important circumstances or issues worth noting as to how you came to work in

philosophy in Canada?

I think it is an important and somewhat unfortunate fact that it was by establishing my

professional reputation in the United States that I was able to secure a position teaching

philosophy at a Ph.D. granting institution in Canada.

What was it like studying philosophy when you were a student? How does this compare

with what you perceive to be the lives of students today?

As I mentioned before, my doctoral studies at the University of Toronto came at the end

of a decades-long period of scholarly strength in Continental Philosophy and the History

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of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, and it felt like that at the time. When I was

studying, I felt very fortunate to have access to such a wealth of learning, embodied in a

number of powerful individuals who formed a veritable "pantheon" as representatives of

the power and the worth of the discipline. I generally do not think I see that kind of

department around anymore, though perhaps schools like Boston University and Boston

College offer something similar. I think that overall there has also been a significant

dismissing of the importance of scholarship, with the result that there are proportionally

fewer great scholars among senior faculty now than there were twenty years ago. I also

think that that period was the end as well of an institutional era that really supported the

kinds of time and activity that doctoral students need to produce excellent philosophical

dissertations. Though substantial bureaucratic pressures and career pressures already

interfered with the educational environment when I was a graduate student, they have

subsequently become much more pronounced. The pressure on students to complete

dissertations in four years has resulted in a manifest decrease in the quality of doctoral

dissertations; the increased emphasis on bookkeeping and surveillance, disguised under

the false rhetoric of "accountability" has made it harder for students to focus on the

important work of disciplinary study; and the introduction of more and more so-called

"skills" courses focused on teaching and research, and generally taught by people who are

not well-qualified to teach them, has encouraged the development of a kind of

"technology" of education and generally hinders the development and expression of

individuality and initiative within doctoral students. These factors overall seem to make

contemporary student life more career-oriented and less learning-oriented than it was 20

years ago.

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Are there any significant changes in the academic world worth noting?

In addition to what I said in my answer to the last question, I think there is a progressive

diminishing of the autonomy of university professors in the classroom, which is highly

detrimental to the educational environment. Universities have their educational practices

shaped more and more by administrators rather than by faculty, and the universities are

more and more oriented towards financial and legal concerns, rather than educational. In

itself, this is not new, of course. In his brilliant essay, "The Conflict of the Faculties,"

Immanuel Kant already wrote about this in great detail and with great insight in the early

1790s. What is new is simply the extent to which the university is being taken over by

administrators.

What do you see as the main benefits of or problems for studying Continental Philosophy

in Canada?

Canada has a lot of excellent scholars of Continental Philosophy; I especially note the

presence of an outstanding group of younger scholars who are currently shaping our

academic scene, such as Hasana Sharp and Alia Al-Saji at McGill University, Shannon

Hoff at the Institute for Christian Studies, David Morris at Concordia University, Kym

Maclaren and David Ciavatta at Ryerson University, Karen Houle at the University of

Guelph, and plenty of others. Also, most of the strongest graduate programs are located

in or around Toronto and Montreal, both of which are rich and vibrant centers of multi-

cultural life; these cities offer a kind of urban experience that is not easily available in the

United States--they are often described as "more European"--but also a North American

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experience different in kind from what one could have in Europe. I believe Canadian

schools offer an excellent environment for the study of Continental Philosophy.

What do you find most attractive about Continental Philosophy in Canada?

Well, both for better and for worse, Canada is not the United States, and scholars of

Continental Philosophy in Canada tend to work largely outside of the circuit of the

American academic world. While this can mean that people do work that is "behind the

times," so to speak, it can also mean that people do work that is unique and creative

beyond what the US world has on offer. Graeme Nicholson's new book Justifying Our

Existence and Jay Lampert's book Deleuze and Guattari's Philosophy of History are two

recent examples of this original work, (and I hope, of course, that people will see my own

two recent books, Human Experience and Bearing Witness to Epiphany, in a similar

light).

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