There used to be a conservative website, some of its content is still around, called “The Postmodern Conservative”. I read a little content from this site as I am a little intrigued how one could maintain the conjecture of a ‘postmodern conservative’. On the surface, this is an oxymoron. Perhaps it is intended ironically. It [...]
The Other is radical only if the desire for it is not the possibility for anticipating it as the desirable or of thinking it out beforehand but if it comes aimlessly as an absolute alterity, like death. John Heaton ‘The Other and Psychotherapy’ in Provocation of Levinas New research on the unconsciousness is reviving discussions [...]
Chris Hayes made an argument on his MSNBC show “Up” that the Occupy movement demonstrates a more effective, inclusive form of government in their nightly town hall type discussions than is demonstrated in the “Super Committee” that was setup to address debt concerns. He viewed the Super Committee as an example of elitist power broking. [...]
Re-reading Blanchot’s essay “From Dread to Language” and thinking of Kierkegaard’s concept of Dread there is a feeling I have of self-obsession. Dread is the ultimate solipsism. Exteriority abandons oneself in Dread and leaves one in a state of irrecoverable and unsalvageable narcissism. The impending doom of an absolute immediate moment that cannot be intervened, [...]
Why must Hegel’s Logic start with freedom? Freedom is not presupposition-less. Freedom means free. Free assumes a move away, a compulsion for dunamis; not dunamis for the sake of dunamis but dunamis as repulsion or attraction. Hegel thinks freedom as immediacy, ‘isness’. Because of freedom, immediacy wants what ‘isness’ isn’t – mediation. Two terms have appeared: [...]
“Raw significance is sent to the mind through the senses, through apperception (and what Husserl called ‘the play of fancy’), and also through introspective reflection and contemplation . It is a call to which consciousness of conscious individuals is *called* to (ostensibly) present a conceptually reciprocal and orderly answer to.” I appreciate the subtlety of [...]
My initial post to a question about causality… One thing that comes to mind is Schrödinger’s cat. Determinations are made by the act of observation that preclude certain results and determine causal outcomes. Could we think of the “box” as determining the result?…perhaps better to think of the observer as predisposing physics towards his expectations [...]
In the light of multiple narratives that run through the notion of the good, responsibility takes on different necessities. In Patocka’s notion of orgiastic and Kierkegaard’s notion of hedonism, responsibility is defined in terms of service to self. Responsibility is not imposed externally but driven by needs. It adheres to no logic or nothing greater [...]
11/5/10 – Addition of paragraphs 3 and 4 —————————————————————————– Jemeinigkeit, Heidegger’s notion of being-toward-death, is Dasein’s (the ‘there’ of human being) utmost possibility. The possibility of the impossible is Dasein’s own most. It cannot be outstripped. It holds open the possibility of Dasein’s authenticity. Death is not a he or a she. Death is mine [...]
Patocka seems to be an interesting thinker. On page 30 Derrida is discussing Patocka’s idea of responsibility. He suggests that Christianity is unknowingly based on Platonic philosophy with which I agree. He goes on to state that Platonism wants to distinguish the “orgiastic” from responsibility. For Plato responsibility was for The Good. However, Patocka wants [...]
