Graduate Students

joshua seachris

Joshua Seachris Areas of specialization: Philosophy of Religion, Philosophical Theology
Areas of competence: Early Modern Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Ethics, Religion/Theology

Dissertation supervisor: Prof. Reinaldo Elugardo

Curriculum Vitae (.doc)

jseachris@ou.edu
(405) 921-8176

My research interests primarily reside in the interpretive and broadly normative cluster of issues related to the meaning of life (the subject of my dissertation), philosophy of religion, and the intersection of philosophy and theology.

My dissertation is a two-part project. In the first part I introduce and defend a narrative interpretation of the question, “What is the meaning of life?” I propose it as a rival interpretive strategy to the most common way of understanding the question, the amalgam thesis, which views it as little more than an ill-conceived place-holder for a disjunctive request consisting of such questions as “What is the purpose(s) of life?” and “What makes life valuable?” among others. My own interpretation views the question as making a singular request: the request for a narrative that narrates across those elements and accompanying questions of life of greatest existential import to human beings. Importantly, this interpretation is able to fuse all of the sub-questions thought to be relevant to the meaning of life under one unifying construct (a narrative), while also taking the original formulation of the question seriously on its own linguistic terms, both of which are desiderata for which the amalgam thesis fails to account. In the balance of the dissertation, I enlist the narrative interpretation in order to compare the two dominant metaphysical “narratives” in the West, namely, naturalism and theism, in its Christian instantiation. I compare these grand-narratives, or metanarratives, on several narrative fronts, including, and especially, how each ends, as narrative ending is thought to be particularly significant for broadly normative appraisals of narratives as a whole. If this is the case, a powerful explanatory rationale emerges for why discussions of death and futility so often track more general discussions of the meaning of life, and also why deep or cosmic futility is thought by many to supervene on a purely naturalist ontology.

Within the philosophy of religion and philosophical theology, I am interested in various dimensions of the evidential problem of evil, as well as questions surrounding epistemic starting points for theological knowledge and method. Beyond this, I have also published in the area of Early Chinese philosophy, so I guess one could say that I have rather broad philosophical tastes, a proclivity I will continue to cultivate.

I am currently Program Administrator for the Templeton Research Fellows Program at Oxford University, a program designed to promote ground-breaking interdisciplinary research in the philosophy of religion.

Publications

  • “Death, Futility, and the Proleptic Power of Narrative Ending,” Religious Studies (Forthcoming) (.pdf)
  • “Yan Hui’s Death as a Threat to Confucius’ Expression of Virtue: A Further Look at the Master’s Grief.” Asian Philosophy: An International Journal of the Philosophical Traditions of the East 18:2 (July 2008): 105-22.
  • “Weighing Evils: The C. S. Lewis Approach,” (first author, with Linda Zagzebski), International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 62:2 (October 2007): 81-88.
  • Review of Keith Mascord’s Alvin Plantinga and Christian Apologetics (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2006) in the Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology (Forthcoming).

Article under review:

  • “The Meaning of Life as Narrative: A New Proposal for Interpreting Philosophy’s ‘Primary’ Question” (.pdf)