Introduction and Assumptions

If for Nietzsche “philosophy is self-confession,” and for Paul Ricoeur “philosophy is narrative,” then autobiography—as self-confession and narrative—is a particular form of philosophy.

It is, also, a useful way of ferreting out assumptions. I have been convinced for some time by Hans-Georg Gadamer's understanding that presuppositions are best laid bare at the beginning of a conversation (Gadamer [1975], 1989, 1976). His worry, and mine too, is that assumptions, when unacknowledged, can exercise a “tyranny of hidden prejudice.” New students come to class with assumptions, which only through careful analytical method are uncovered and their tyranny exposed. It is only fitting, then, for me to be candid from the start. The presupposition I bring to this chapter is a developing nonviolent critical theory.

It is a moot point how anyone develops foundational moral commitments: sometimes through a long period of inner struggle and sometimes as an existential moment of enlightenment, often as an unthinking internalization of social mores. As a young trainee Christian minister in 1983, I attended a weeklong workshop hosted by the Royal Army Chaplain's Department at Bagshot Park in Surrey, England. Bagshot Park is a marvelous old hunting lodge dating back to the Stuart monarchs of the seventeenth century, owned by the Queen and, at that time, leased to the British army. As a civic-minded young man I was conscious of public duty and wanted to do something useful with my life and I wondered about becoming an army chaplain. It was toward the end of the week, after being wined and dined by Her Majesty's finest, that I concluded that I could not become an army chaplain. Above the ornate fireplace at the lodge was a grand depiction of the cap badge of the Chaplain's Department. The motto on the badge reads “In This Sign Conquer,” above a stylistic Christian cross. I had studied enough history by then to realize that the inscription was a reference to the supposed words that the Roman Emperor Constantine had seen in his vision of the clouds, after which he converted to Christianity.