Category: Philosophy as a Way of Life
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Notes on Immaterialism | Becoming Integral
In Immaterialism: Objects and Social Theory (Polity Press, 2016), Graham Harman applies his object-oriented philosophy to social objects. The book functions as “a compact list of the first principles of object-oriented social theory, which I have also called ‘immaterialism’” (126). This presentation of an object-oriented social theory includes a detailed…
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Anti-Fascism vs. Nostalgia in “Rogue One”
Thanks to my old high school friend, John F., for pointing this out to me. Great summary of why Rogue One may be the best Star Wars film yet. The author is at pains, sometimes, to be sufficiently critical; maybe errs a bit much on heavy handed readings to get the…
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Becoming Other: Foucault, Deleuze, and the Political Nature of Thought | Learning Philosophy of Change
In this paper–linked after the jump–Giorgio Bertini employs the notion of the ‘thought of the outside’ as developed by Michel Foucault, in order to defend the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze against the criticisms of ‘elitism,’ ‘aristocratism,’ and ‘political indifference’–famously leveled by Alain Badiou and Peter Hallward… Source: Becoming Other: Foucault, Deleuze, and…
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The idea of God
Intro to Philosophy on MWF @ 1:00pm. I asked the youth to read chapter 4 of Way to Wisdom–“The Idea of God.” Mostly I spent time laying the groundwork for a better understanding of what Jaspers means by “faith.”
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Hesiod’s Chaos and Laozi’s Way
PHIL 1060, Monday nights, 19 Sep 2016 Grounding ourselves in how the ancient Greeks and Chinese thought about the order of things. First, we discussed the basics of Hesiod’s mythopoeic worldview as a procreative cosmogony. Then, we moved over to talk about the insights of Laozi’s poetry concerning the Dào.…
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Encountering the Encompassing
PHIL 1050, MWF @ 1:00pm, Monday 19 Sep 2016 My young friends were asked to read Jaspers chapter on das Umgreifende, the Encompassing or as Ralph Mannheim translates the term in Way to Wisdom, the Comprehensive. Not an easy thing to talk about or think about. My hope was that our…
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The nameless backgrounds the nameable
MWF PHIL 1050.006, 1:00pm, Friday 16 Sep 2016 We took a close look at poem 1 about the Dao (Way), spending time on the (ironic) difference between the Nameless and the nameable. Basically, it is difficult to name the Ultimate Source of Reality and any attempt to name the Source must fail. Laozi does not…
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Metaphysics, Memory, and Dewey
I was asked to drop by my colleague’s class and hold forth on Chapter 1 of John Dewey’s text The Reconstruction of Philosophy (get the text here). Here are the recordings from those days. Had some good discussions with the folks in the class. Tuesday 06 Sep 2016 Thursday 08 Sep…
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Mythopoesis
Intro to Philosophy (MWF @ 1pm)–12 Sep 2016 We went through the beginning of Greek philosophy in Hesiod/Homer in their attempt to express a just world order through making-narratives (mythopoesis) of gods and the birth of the cosmos. This led to disclosing the purpose of the course: to examine the attempts…
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Pressing against
Intro to Philosophy (MWF @ 1pm)–09 Sep 2016 We went through and hit some notions from Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
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The duty of being friends
M-W-F @ 1:00pm, lecture for 8/31/2016. The relationship of philosophizing (caring as skillfulness of mind) to freedom (the duty-to-be-friends) by way of mindful lineage.
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Whatification
First Monday evening class for Fall 2016, Intro to Philosophy. I am treating the afternoon class and the evening class as two very distinct iterations of the same material. For the evening class, like the earlier one, I started with asking, “What is education?” I got very different answers! So…
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Of the usefulness of propriety and the uselessness of superheroes
Started off the day asking about why we have such a big proliferation in the stories of superheroes. Finished the day by talking about Dào 38 and touching on a lot of the problems with professional education in the USA.
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When critical thinking challenges reality
The biggest problem with those who begin coordinating rigged facts into weak–and very often invalid–arguments is that they have given up critique for criticism and argument for arguing.
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Dyadic not dualistic
It’s difficult to break out of the Western habitude of dualism. But it is especially important to make the effort when thinking of the Chinese notion of Yin Yang. Rather than another form of dualism in the history of philosophy, it teaches the insight of dynamic equilibrium. After a short break,…
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Prayer and Thinking
We began with me sharing some ideas about the connection between prayer and thinking. We discussed Poem 27 of the Dào Dé Jing along with some forays into Poem 1.
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Reverence Ritual Worship Worldview
For this class, we took a step back to explore a few concepts before we move from India to China.
CALL ME MAGGIE 
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