James E. Faulconer (Jim) was born in Missouri and raised as the son of an Army officer. Because of his father’s work, he grew up in Japan, Arkansas, Germany, Texas, Korea, and Massachusetts. Faulconer joined the LDS Church as a teenager in San Antonio, Texas. After serving as a Latter-day Saint missionary in Korea from early 1967 to late 1969, he returned to Brigham Young university. While a student he met and married Janice K. Allen of Herlong, California. They have four children and eleven grandchildren.
Faulconer obtained his BA in English from BYU. Discovering along the way that he wasn't really cut out to be a poet and falling in love with philosophy on the rebound, he took his MA and PhD in philosophy from Pennsylvania State University. Faulconer's philosophical interest is primarily in contemporary European philosophy, particularly that associated with and subsequent to Martin Heidegger, such as one finds in the French phenomenological tradition. Currently, for example, most of his reading and research is in the work of Jean-Luc Marion.
Faulconer has taught in the Philosophy Department at BYU since 1975 and is a holder of the Richard L. Evans Chair of Religious Understanding. He is the author of Scripture Study: Tools and Suggestions (FARMS 1999), Faith, Philosophy, Scripture (Maxwell Institute 2010), and a forthcoming commentary on the first eight chapters of the book of Romans (Maxwell Institute), the latter, like the first, the consequence of his hobby of scripture study.
Faulconer has edited three philosophy books, including Reconsidering Psychology (with Richard N. Williams; Duquesne 1990), Appropriating Heidegger (with Mark A. Wrathall; Cambridge 2000), and Transcendence in Philosophy and Religion (Indiana University 2003). His early publications were in the philosophy of psychology, but most recently his publications have been in journals of Continental philosophy, such as Studia Phaenomenologica and Levinas Studies. Faulconer also publishes regularly in LDS journals on topics concerning scripture study and the philosophy of religion. He is a regular contributor at the group blog Feast upon the Word.
Faulconer is currently working on a collection of essays by various authors dealing with religious devotional practices from a philosophical point of view and on a book that will give an overview of Mormon theology.
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