Background Practices: Essays on the Understanding of Being

Hubert L. Dreyfus

2017-06 · Oxford University Press

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This volume presents a selection of Hubert Dreyfus's pioneering work in bringing phenomenology and existentialism to bear on the philosophical and scientific study of the mind. Each of the thirteen essays interprets, develops, and extends the insights of his predecessors working in the European philosophical tradition. One of Dreyfus' central contributions to reading the historical canon of philosophy comes from his recognition that great philosophers help us to understand the "background practices" of a culture - the practices that shape and embody our most basic understanding of ourselves and the things and situations we encounter in our world. Background practices are all too often overlooked completely, or else their importance is misunderstood. Each chapter in this volume shows in one way or another how a broad range of philosophical topics can only be properly understood when we recognize how they are grounded in the background practices that shape our lives and give meaning to our activities, our tasks, our normative commitments, our aims and our goals.

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Hubert L. Dreyfus is Professor of Philosophy in the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. His research bridges the Analytic and Continental traditions in philosophy. His major interests are phenomenology, existentialism, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of literature, and philosophical implications of artificial intelligence. He is the author of Skillful Coping: Essays on the Phenomenology of Everyday Perception and Action (OUP, 2014), Retrieving Realism (with Charles Taylor, Harvard University Press), and All Things Shining (with Sean Kelly, Simon & Schuster). Mark Wrathall is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of California, Riverside. He works in the phenomenological tradition of philosophy, and is interested in issues surrounding selfhood, responsibility, authenticity, temporality, and the phenomenology of religious life. He is the author of Heidegger and Unconcealment: Truth, Language, and History (CUP) and How to Read Heidegger (W.W. Norton). He has edited a number of volumes, including Skillful Coping: Essays on the Phenomenology of Everyday Perception and Action (OUP, 2014) and The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger's Being and Time (CUP).