We Are, Therefore I Am

Jade Reidy

"What's most important is to understand the questions. That should be the value of a university." Born with travel in his blood, John Hinchcliff's first overseas journey in 1958 coincided with the tragic drowning of his nine-year-old brother. That long boat journey gave him time to embrace the central questions philosophers have grappled with since turning away from mythology as an explanation for existence. If death alone is certain, and its time and place uncertain, what is the meaning of my life? Who am l? How shall | become? John Hincheliff became a religious philosopher, visionary dreamer, feisty polytechnic reformer, educational theorist, astute politician, social activist, chaplain, husband and father, AUT's first vice chancellor and head of the institute for 20 years. And yet all attempts to label him are like a group of blind people invited to identify an elephant. One takes hold of the tail and says it's a rope; another clasps a leg and says it's a pillar; another holds the trunk and says it's a tube. His life-all life,he contends-is a complex mystery in which to participate. This biography is a journey through Western philosophy, the anti-war and nuclear disarmament movements, the radical changes in tertiary education in New Zealand in the past 20 years. And an invitation to share in the mystery of becoming.