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....

how limited international law is like high school

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part of a project on Habermas and transnationalism

Ignoring of international law—“with impunity,” they say—commonly has no consequences for “sovereigns.” We easily idealize a common commitment to law, but how to make it binding is anyone’s guess. (March 15, 2014: You, too, can become Russian). 

A few days ago, I came across two books on international law that seemed very relevant. Their titles are the basis of my subject line (but not the “high school” part—which has a serious side to it). I came across the titles because I was thinking about the Syria Event, whose parameters have changed significantly in recent days. My interest is also to think about the nature of international law, in light of the Syria Event (but I’m no specialist on law).

But who cares about the common impotence of international law? The Syrians do, certainly (glad). Allies of the Syrians care. Regional neighbors with their own agendas care (not glad). And investors who want global market stability care (not glad). Oh!: And soft-hearted humanitarians with free time to feel desperate sympathy for tragic violations of human rights. But the latter doesn’t (1) sell; nor (2) terribly bother regional neighbors with their own agendas. The bottom line easily seems to be...The Bottom Line. 

cultivating humanity

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I want to recycle a favorite quote from Habermas: the closing paragraphs of JH’s lecture “The Idea of the University,” 1986 (citation follows the quote). Here I’m splitting apart the passage from that lecture and numbering the parts, for the sake of later reference.

This is basically one continuous passage—one continuous period of his presentation—from his lecture. But I’ve edited out some short parts in order to emphasize a sense of the progressive practicality of higher education which philosophy after metaphysicalism may serve. An implicit ethos for me is that the efficacy of higher education (with its research enterprises) leads prospects for generalized Good (human development, healthy regions, ethical industrial development, political ethics, sustainable planet, etc.).

Habermas highlights 14 aspects...