A Fully Illustrated Book is on the Horizon

Ana Maria Rocha, my youngest sister by thirteen years, is a talented young artist who has taken on an impressive and challenging first commissioned project: illustrating a philosophical book, my philosophical book.

This past Christmas break, I decided to write “A Primer in Philosophy,” an introductory essay for students in my philosophy courses. Since then, the essay has ballooned into a short manuscript and, with lots of help from a select group of friends at Wabash, the new book-to-be (titled A Primer for Philosophy and Education) is nearly ready to be piloted.

The illustrations are key because the whole book is about the preparing oneself to embark on a fundamentally descriptive project. Ana’s descriptions in picture will sit alongside my own in prose. Together, we will craft and shape them for another year and hope to publish the book in the Summer or Fall of 2013.

I will pilot a draft of the book in my “Foundations of Educational Thought” and “Philosophical Foundations of Education” courses this year at the University of North Dakota and I would be happy to share copies with those who are interested (just send me an e-mail). With her permission, I may post drafts of her artwork here, too.

I am already imagining a future where visual art might become a strict necessity for my writing. Exciting times!

SR

ps: In other news, David Mosley — philosophy professor at Bellarmine University — invited me to write the forward to his monograph on Nietzsche’s philosophy of education, set to appear sometime in 2013. I accepted, of course, and look forward to it. David’s work is highly original and richly musical.