© Alphonso Lingis and Figure/Ground Communication
Dr. Lingis was interviewed by Edyta Niemyjska on November 23rd, 2012 as part of the Figure/Ground Communication scholarly interview series:
http://www.figureground.ca/interviews/alphonso-lingis/
Alphonso Lingis is an American philosopher, writer and translator, currently Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. He specializes in phenomenology, existentialism, and ethics. Lingis attended Loyola University in Chicago, then pursued graduate study at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. His doctoral dissertation, written under scholar Alphonse de Waelhens, was a discussion of the French phenomenologists Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre. Returning to the United States, Lingis joined the faculty at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, quickly gaining a reputation as the preeminent English translator of Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Levinas. In the mid-1960s he moved to Penn State University, where he worked diligently at his translation projects and published numerous scholarly articles on the history of philosophy. During this period, he also began the habit of wide-ranging world travel that leaves a deep stamp on all of his work. His latest books are The First Person Singular (2007), Violence and Splendor (2010) and Contact (2011).
