Peg O’Connor, professor in the philosophy department and the gender, women, and sexuality studies program is the subject of a Q & A on the Huffington Post. The interview is titled, “Interview With a Philosopher: Aristotle and Wittgenstein Walk into a Bar — Philosophy and Addiction.”
O’Connor’s argument is that many of the crucial questions and concepts in western philosophy are useful in understanding addiction, and that philosophy as a discipline has much to learn from people in recovery. This interview gives a snap shot of a longer book project, On the Rocks Is a Form of Life, that O’Connor is writing for the general reader.
Click here to read the story on the Huffington Post website.
O’Connor is also the recipient of an A.A. Heckman Fellowship from the Hazelden Foundation in Center City, Minn. Hazelden is widely recognized as one of the leading treatment centers in the world. O’Connor’s fellowship project takes her to the archives to investigate what influence the philosopher/psychologist William James had on the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous.
O’Connor’s scholarship on philosophy and addiction both informs and is informed by the work she does as part of Gustavus’s High Risk Drinking Initiative. She is the co-creator and co-facilitator (with Janet DeMars) of the educational program onGUARD, which stands for On Guided Understandings of Alcohol’s Real Dilemmas. This educational program uses philosophical concepts to challenge students about the choices they are making and how these choices affect their relationships, their future prospects, and most fundamentally, their character. To read more about this work, click here to read an article from the Spring 2011 edition of the Gustavus Quarterly. The article appears on pages 18 and 19 of the Quarterly.
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