Category: Philosophy
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A Study in Existential Philosophy (Part 5)
Is this forerunner for Heidegger’s ideas of being-in-the-world? Quite possibly, says Barrett even if such the concept was furthest from Wordsworth’s thoughts.
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A Study in Existential Philosophy (Part 4)
My summer reading: Willem Barrett’s 1959 classic, Irrational Man, A Study in Existential Philosophy. As Hellenist reason takes hold of Western culture, Christianity comes on the scene, and with it, new concerns and questions. Faith vs. Reason In the first century, Saint Paul, the Apostle, asserted that the faith he preached was foolishness to the…
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A Study in Existential Philosophy (Part 3)
Note that this dualistic opposition between black and white is a Western construct. Witness the difference between the Chinese treatment of black and white, Ying and Yang.
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A Study in Existential Philosophy (Part 2)
Change that construct, and you’re well on the road to resolving ‘angst’ or that deep seated, irrefutable, insatiable anxiety from which, 20th century writers like Eliot, Forster, and Woolf and 20th century Existentialists like Heidegger were suffering.
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A Study in Existential Philosophy (Part 1)
Onward forges capitalism until we find ourselves devoid of anything tangible to which we can hold except faceless corporations, sprawling factories, and of course, the next pay check.
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What is Truth – Take 2?!
This is the second of a series of three mini-essays written for a course exploring various philosophical theories of ‘truth’: For William James, turn-of-the-last-century adherent of Pragmatism, ‘truth’ was a working hypothesis; if something ‘works’ to enable us to move forward in our search for ‘truth’, then accept it as ‘true’ (for now). By contrast,…
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What is Truth?
This is the first of a series of three mini-essays written for a course exploring various philosophical theories of ‘truth’: The correspondence theory holds that a truth bearer such as a sentence, is ‘true’ if it can be shown to correspond to some verifiable ‘fact’ (i.e. concrete, empirical evidence) regarding some (often physical) reality. Undeniably,…
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Growth & Expansion
Think along the lines of the growth/expansion of a tumor – or even the coronavirus – that may ultimately kill you.
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The name of the game is shame?
I don’t know about you, but I often worry about whether by taking poor decisions, I might be making myself bad karma. Mind you, I’m not even certain what karma is, much less how it might work but I’ve always been told that ‘what goes around does come around’ and for the most part, that…
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Have some fun…
A more productive approach might be to take ourselves less seriously. This could be achieved through the more positive aspects of irresponsibility – i.e. having some old-fashioned, light-hearted fun.