'Dawn' is a philosophical narrative exploring multiple meanings of the word as those meanings are set against case studies of life experiences together with philosophical views, the latter ranging from Aristotle and Montaigne through Kierkegaard, Kant, Nicholas Berdyaev, Gabriel Marcel, James Conant, and John McDowell. While the dawning of a new day begins the odyssey and is never completely absent, the dawn as a metaphor for 'upbringing' and its effects over time becomes even more central as that tale progresses toward Aristotle's and John McDowell's integration of 'upbringing' in their philosophical writings. In this way 'Dawn' explicates the notion of how new forms of ethical thought enter human consciousness. Ending with McDowell's idea of 'second nature, ' brief stops along the way integrate individual writings from Hugh of Saint Victor, Martin Luther, the Ottawa medicine society of Midewiwin, Charles Darwin, Joseph Conrad, A. J. Grout, Milan Kundera, Hegel, Martin Seligman, and Jonathan Lear. The entire narrative focuses on a lifetime of excursions into 'practical wisdom' using both fictional and real experiences as a background. In conjunction with McDowell's analysis, 'Dawn' highlights the strength of his philosophy -- as outlined in 'Mind and World' and key essays from 'Mind, Value & Reality' -- by showing (in the mind of one reviewer of McDowell's) how his work creatively weaves, "from the history of thought in general and philosophy in particular," answers that make sense "of an account of the deepest intellectual sources of the problems constituting 'modern' philosophy."
About the Author: Earl Ronneberg, author of the trilogy, 'Old Friends and Other Stories, Stories of Identity, and Stories of Groups, ' grew up in Chicago and attended Princeton on a NROTC Regular scholarship before serving three years on activy duty on the destroyer, USS Hank (DD-702). After the Navy he earned a master's degree from Stanford, married, and moved to Hyde Park in Chicago where he completed an MBA while employed by IBM; he also completed the four-year certificate program in great books, both from the University of Chicago. After thirty-two years with IBM, he retired and completed a Master in Liberal Arts degree from the University of Chicago; 'Work -- a Memoir, ' his first non-fiction book, chronicles a span of thirty-four years from May 1964 through June 30th of 1997. 'A Love Affair With Flowers Fair' is Ronneberg's second non-fiction work, a book of 365 poems, mostly sonnets, culled from over 500 poems and organized by assigning each to an appropriate day of the year. 'Black Friends, ' a third non-fiction work, chronicles what Ronneberg felt to be an often unwritten sequence: reflections on the unique experiences that formed the sensibilities -- with respect to the black race -- of a white boy who grew up in a priviledged and segregated environment, and how, by the grace of circumstance and his own actions, he came to thankfully embrace a dimension of his life that, if lacking, would have made him less complete as a human being. 'Dawn, ' a philosophical narrative, is a fourth non-fiction work that draws upon his earlier writings as well as fictional sources and philosophical and existential writers. It celebrates John McDowell's philosophical writings as outlined in 'Mind and World' and key essays from 'Mind, Value & Reality.' In addition to writing, Ronneberg audits classes in history, philosophy, literature, and art history, at the University of Chicago. Many of his short one-act plays have been incorporated into his short story books.