Palmquist, Stephen Richard 1957-

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Palmquist, Stephen Richard 1957-

PERSONAL:

Born August 21, 1957, in Nome, AK. Education: Westmont College, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1979; St. Peter's College, Oxford, Ph.D., 1987.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Hong Kong, China. Office—Religion and Philosophy Department, Hong Kong Baptist University, 224 Waterloo Rd., Kowloon, Hong Kong, China. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China, department of religion and philosophy, assistant professor, 1987-92, associate professor, 1993-97, professor, 1997—; Philopsychy Press, Hong Kong, China, founder and editor, 1992—. Grace Institute for Religious Learning, Berkeley, CA, visiting lecturer in philosophy, 1993—; University of California, Berkeley, visiting scholar in linguistics, 2001; Stanford University, visiting scholar in philosophy, 2006-07; Center for Insight into Philosophic Health, Education and Renewal (CIPHER), founder and organizer, 1997; Hong Kong Philosophy Café, founder, 1999; lecturer at various conferences on philosophy and religion. Previously worked running a printing press in Santa Barbara, and for several newspapers and religious organizations.

MEMBER:

North American Kant Society; American Philosophical Society.

WRITINGS:

The Tree of Philosophy: A Course of Introductory Lectures for Beginning Students of Philosophy, Philopsychy Press (Hong Kong, China), 1991.

Kant's System of Perspectives: An Architectonic Interpretation of the Critical Philosophy, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 1993.

Biblical Theocracy: A Vision of the Biblical Foundations for a Christian Political Philosophy, Philopsychy Press (Hong Kong, China), 1993.

Dreams of Wholeness, Philopsychy Press (Hong Kong, China), 1997.

Kant's Critical Religion: Volume Two of Kant's System of Perspectives, Ashgate (Burlington, VT), 2000.

The Waters of Love, Philopsychy Press (Hong Kong, China), 2003.

(Editor, with Chris L. Firestone) Kant and the New Philosophy of Religion, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 2006.

Author's works have been translated into Chinese and Indonesian. Contributor of over eighty articles and reviews to academic journals and other periodicals.

SIDELIGHTS:

Stephen Richard Palmquist was born in Nome, Alaska. His family moved to California soon after his birth, however, in order to seek specialized treatment for his congenital heart defect, and that is where he grew up. Palmquist attended Westmont College, where he studied religion. He went on to work in a business forms factory running a large printing press, before continuing his theological studies at Oxford University in England. Palmquist ultimately became interested in philosophy, specifically the works of Immanuel Kant, and earned his doctorate in the field. Palmquist's first book, Kant's System of Perspectives: An Architectonic Interpretation of the Critical Philosophy, grew out of his doctoral thesis.

Palmquist traveled to Hong Kong, where he took a position in the department of religion and philosophy at Hong Kong Baptist University. In Hong Kong, he founded Philopsychy Press, through which he published a trilogy of lecture-style textbooks: The Tree of Philosophy: A Course of Introductory Lectures for Beginning Students of Philosophy, Dreams of Wholeness, and The Waters of Love. He has continued to write, producing a number of volumes on philosophy, with a focus on the writings of Kant.

In Kant's Critical Religion: Volume Two of Kant's System of Perspectives, a follow-up to his first book, Palmquist addresses the ways in which Kant's philosophical beliefs fit in with religious beliefs, discussing Kant's attitudes toward religion in particular. Philip Rossi, in a review for Theological Studies, noted that Palmquist "displays impressive acquaintance with the full range of Kant's writings," but added that his overriding interpretation, however original, "seems more to get in the way of engaging Kant's own texts and what he says about religion than it does to illuminate these matters." On the other hand, Thomas A. Russman, writing in the Review of Metaphysics, called the book "a compendious effort, full of excellent textual analysis."

Palmquist told CA: "I first felt an inner calling to be a writer when I took a college class on love and found myself disagreeing with most of what the teacher said. Not surprisingly, perhaps, this may be why I tend to think of my book The Waters of Love as my best writing to date. It is not only the culmination of my trilogy of teaching textbooks, but is also the product of thirty-five years of scholarly reflection on the topic that motivated me to become a scholar. My professional publications are bound to be misunderstood if taken as straight interpretations; they are, in fact, my attempt to reconstruct Kant's philosophy on the basis of principles he set up but did not himself follow very consistently. The goal of all my writing, however, is the same, and is best explained in my book The Tree of Philosophy: to convey new insights to the reader, thereby modeling how the readers themselves can gain new insights of their own."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Review of Metaphysics, September, 2002, Thomas A. Russman, review of Kant's Critical Religion: Volume Two of Kant's System of Perspectives, p. 197.

Theological Studies, December, 2001, Philip Rossi, review of Kant's Critical Religion, p. 864.