Month: February 2015

• February 19, 2015

  Eastern vs. Western views of hope during our unsettled time: A conflict and resolution

  One major conflict between Eastern and Western philosophy is over whether one has any warrant to hope. The Eastern line adheres to the thought: being present with what is present just is freedom, is realization. One attains to ultimate tranquility just when one intuits this, after which time one is fully with what is. Because one is…
• February 18, 2015

  Cultural devastation vs. cultural collapse: First thoughts on Radical Hope

  Suppose we were to think about a people’s way of life’s going out of existence. What sort of hope, Jonathan Lear asks in his short book Radical Hope, could a people have for a life well-lived going otherwise? In his brief comments on Lear’s book, the insightful Heideggerian philosopher Hubert Dreyfus points to a confusion in…
• February 17, 2015

  Wondering and wandering

  It is wonderful to think about the connection between wandering and wondering. ‘Wandering about, he wondered about…’ ‘Wondering, he wandered…’ The connection can be bi-causal: Wondering over X led him to wander about in the library. Wandering into the magical garden caused him to ask, ‘What in the world is that?’
• February 15, 2015

  You can come to the desert but you cannot stay here

  You can come to the desert, you can live here, but you cannot stay here. We knew this when we arrived in Joshua Tree, yet I doubt we knew why. Yesterday, Aleksandra found a beautiful skull of a baby coyote, fully intact and blanched, cleaned, and preserved by the desert sun. She is right to say that the desert…
• February 9, 2015

  Amazement doesn’t add up

  I am amazed when what I am in the presence of doesn’t immediately add up. It is not the concrete particular, not something about some thing but the general furniture of the world that carries me into amazement. Then, the world presents itself to me as a mystery, full and true. I didn’t know that–. I…