How are you, my friend? It has been ages since I made the trek to the Heidegger Symposium, so I think I have missed a few opportunities to see you.

I agree, and I hope I would not give the impression that contemplation has not place in my own project. Paulo Freire’s work–the inspiration for Giroux–brings together the abstract thinking of Buber, Jaspers, Ortega, Husserl, and even Heidegger to push forward a notion that educators need to engage students in such a way that abstract thinking does not reduce down merely to verbalism nor active struggle merely to activism.

Critique and crisis are co-constitutive for possible Existenz. Word & deed must be intwined.

I am not concerned with reaching 300,000 or 30,000 or even 300 people. I am concerned with the loving struggle between Existenzen who would be their ownmost selves. This public intellectual project has all of the markers to become another form of stupefication. But it also provides a place where abstract ideas get to people who might never encounter them because they do not go to university.

How do I encourage my young and old friends to get to the depths of thinking if they are not at university? Or if being among the few who enter higher education, keep them from becoming discouraged when they find themselves taught by professionals ever concerned with individual position & professional collegiality before solidarity with humankind let alone concern for Being or the Encompassing?

Every youth with whom I have shared videos like this wants to read more Heidegger, Jaspers, Ranciere, etc., not less. And do this while they struggle among themselves to formulate a community that honors both the abstract word and the concrete deed.

I would be interested to know your thoughts on how we might use these new resources at our disposal to encourage the thinking that risks the perils of the depths.