Habermas and religion

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Habermas and Religion is an anthology of essays from a 2010 conference on this topic with a lengthy “Reply to My Critics” by Habermas at the end. Habermas’s reply is actually a rather systematic address of his views, rather than simply response to the essays.

The area of interest has been long running, both for Habermas and for readers of him, including myself. In a progressive and practical American spirit, I posted two long discussions earlier, one of which links at the end to the other discussion; so, I’ll link here just to the first: “‘Post-secularity’ as just modern humanism.”

This posting presently is basically a placeholder for further work on the topic. At this time, I hear, Habermas is working on an extensive treatise about the evolution of religion. So, I expect that future years will provide occasion to link to more from here.

Contact Competence with Absolute Others

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The fact that there are probably many Earth-like planets in our galaxy is mind boggling.

We’ve been searching for planets merely a few decades. We’ve only had electronic technology for little over a century. What about intelligent life that’s millions of years beyond us? You think they don’t know we’re here?

As a long-time member of S.E.T.I., I’m familiar with the realism of the issue and also the serious speculations about why The Search has only found silence.

In a phrase—cute, but serious—my view is like talking about great sex: 5 year-olds wouldn’t understand, and it would be abusive of an adult to bring up the subject. The Absolute Others (A.O.s, let’s say) are keeping silent until we’ve evolved further.

in praise of constructive engagement

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Why do persons with a personality disorder (e.g., narcissism) need therapy to get beyond it, rather than merely changing their ways in light of empathic critique?

Of course, personalities get invested in ways of perceiving, ways of reading, ways of regarding oneself that gave psychoanalysis its credibility (which infused literary criticism long before Deconstruction). The therapeutic calling can be a critical hermeneutics that requires quiet tact. Those who regard philosophy as therapy get there through experience.

Heidegger and reading political times

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July 15, 2014: This will eventually be used in a very expanded Website project that allows for development of subtopics beyond brief indications here.

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I intellectually grew up with Heidegger’s major work, beginning in 1971. What can I say briefly that’s useful? In a few sentences: Heidegger’s short-lived hermeneutical phenomenology of political time-space expressed an emancipatory philosophical interest in enabling his locality to show community-based potential. Indeed—and unsurprisingly—the philosopher sees philosophy enabling community-based constructiveness, which was to be detailed systematically in university policy and realistic, practical curriculae. Educational leadership enables the people to be the self-formative basis of the good state. The answer to people’s prejudice is education. This may educe one’s ownmost advance of self-understanding (and self confidence) which is the condition for the possibility of a generous spirit, thus for durable openness to truly understanding and living with all ways of genuine lives.

[May 17, 2014: Alluding to generous spirit here is my heuristic; but it could be explicated in fidelity to Heidegger’s critique of notions of spirit. The holding good of the “thing” also applies to public space that may witness mirrorplays of ethnic integrity: a multi-ethnicity that is also deeply humanistic—beyond the essentialist humanism that Heidegger re-frames—thus, “post”-ethnic in the sense of the interplay itself of deeply humanistic appreciation for all ethnicities in and as their authentic inter-presence.]

“...the healing of a common humanity”

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My title here is a passing phrase in a remarkable column at the New York Times, “Medicine’s Search for Meaning,” especially the second half of the article which moves beyond discussing the loss of meaning in the business of medicine to how medical schools are securing the feeling for medicine, and senior physicians are finding renewal. 

It’s not a common humanity that’s being healed, of course; rather, the disclosure of one’s own humanity as the basis for durable empathy and for belonging durably to the art of the calling—the work of the art—heals. 

on being light

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We don’t wince at talk of humane or humanistic enlightenment, but to walk the talk is to enown teaching, philosophically perhaps to ask: What is channeled that may be so enowned by learning that It gives (as Heidegger would connote with “Es gibt,” There is/It gives) enlightening, at best profoundly so?

A developmental interest (one’s ownmost reason for an emancipatory interest) belongs to both learner and teacher, at best in an essentially-complementary way.

caring for progressive pragmatism

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When I happened across the NYTimes review of An Uncertain Glory, by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, about contemporary India, I found myself “stuck” on the photo. You must read the review (after reading my post, of course).

According to the reviewer, the book is...

...a heartfelt plea to rethink what progress in a poor country ought to look like....“There is a real need for pragmatism here,” they write, “and to avoid both the crushing inefficiency of market denial . . . and the pathology of ideological marketization.”...

This echoes the debate in the U.S. and Europe on “austerity” vs. “stimulation,” which has been dramatic in India as

...the “feud” between [1] Drèze and Sen, champions of the poor, and [2] the economists Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, co-authors of Why Growth Matters and champions of market deregulation, who argue that too much spending on social welfare programs might derail economic growth....