Not just Hannah Arendt’s teacher, Karl Jaspers is a great philosopher in his own right. His work has been influential for many developments in twentieth-century philosophy, theology, and psychiatry. Here are two quotations in which he provides basic (yet profound) definitions of truth and philosophy. “Within time, truth is forever underway, always in motion andContinue reading “Truth and Philosophy on the Way”
Monthly Archives: December 2011
Monads: windowless glass houses
Graham Harman has a nice post up “On the Laziness of Comparing Object-Oriented Philosophy with Leibniz.” One of the points he brings up is that, even though he and Leibniz affirm windowless monads, monads are still determined by their relations in Leibniz , but their reality is non-relational in object-oriented philosophy. Although I tend to follow Whitehead andContinue reading “Monads: windowless glass houses”
Schelling on the object of philosophy
This is a wonderful quotation from Schelling’s 1842 Philosophy of Mythology. Here’s the German: Bei jeder Erklärung ist das Erste, daß sie dem zu Erklärende Gerechtigkeit widersahren lasse, es nicht herabdrücke, herabdeute, ver kleinere oder verstümmle, damit es leichter zu begreifen sey. Hier fragt sich nicht, welche Ansicht muß von der Erscheinung gewonnen werden, damitContinue reading “Schelling on the object of philosophy”
To the Poems Themselves
I am always dissatisfied with definitions of poetry that focus on how poetry expresses connections between humans and the world (and maybe God, too). I have metaphysical objections to those kind of definitions, but aside from that, I just don’t enjoy the kind of analyses that follow from them. If you define poetry in termsContinue reading “To the Poems Themselves”
A New Philosophy for the 21st Century
What is becoming of philosophy in the 21st century? There’s a great piece on that topic that just came out in the Chronicle of Higher Education Review. It is written by Robert Frodeman and Adam Briggle, who both teach at my alma mater, the Philosophy and Religion Studies department at the University of North Texas.Continue reading “A New Philosophy for the 21st Century”
Integral Dabbling
The word “integral” connotes wholeness or completeness, like an integer. What interests me is that, etymologically, integral also means un-touched. The prefix “in” has a negative force (like “un-“ or “non-“), and “teg” comes from the Latin tangere (“to touch”). An integral philosophy would be a philosophy of untouched unity or untouched units. How, then,Continue reading “Integral Dabbling”
a god, a fetish, a thing
I often find myself thinking about the worship of fetishes. By definition, a fetish is an artificial or made thing (feitiço, facere, making). At the same time, it is a deity. What is a deity if it is itself a created object? What is an object if it can function as a deity? When I’mContinue reading “a god, a fetish, a thing”
Object-Oriented Philosophy and Knowledge Ecology
I first heard about object-oriented philosophy around five years ago when reading a piece by Graham Harman in Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel. Writing about Heidegger, Harman makes the point that Heidegger’s philosophy isn’t simply another example of a linguistic turn in philosophy. Heidegger’s turn was a turn to things. Continue reading “Object-Oriented Philosophy and Knowledge Ecology”
