Situatedness

DASEIN, Being-here, openness, having to be open, connectedness

  • Mountain dog school for living philosophy

    The Mountain Dog School for Living Philosophy promotes philosophy as a way of life, inviting individuals from diverse backgrounds to explore existential questions through dialogue and reflection. Its mission emphasizes personal engagement in philosophizing, fostering authenticity, self-actualization, and meaningful relationships… Continue reading

    Mountain dog school for living philosophy
  • Into the Breath Between Strangers

    the thread of life weaves weird wandering moments Continue reading

    Into the Breath Between Strangers
  • Responsive to skillful attention

    The concept of discernment is vital for cultivating awareness, as it involves skillfully distinguishing experiences without over-determining or under-determining. This harmonizes extremes to avoid the fall into nihilism and eternalism. Simultaneously, it reawakens the empty yet interconnected nature of all… Continue reading

    Responsive to skillful attention
  • Showing-Up for Emptiness: Excellence Between Obsession and Apathy

    The concept of “showing-up” emphasizes active existence over passive presence. It involves intentional engagement with the world, others, and oneself. By exploring the balance between appetite, emotion, and intellect through the lens of askēsis, individuals can cultivate a deeper, responsive… Continue reading

    Showing-Up for Emptiness: Excellence Between Obsession and Apathy
  • A Fourfold for the Current Empire

    I explore the concept of “transistance,” a practice of navigating life’s complexities without adhering to rigid frameworks. It emphasizes the importance of embracing ambiguity and interdependence, while rejecting traditional revolutionary approaches. I propose it is a first step of a… Continue reading

    A Fourfold for the Current Empire
  • Whispering New Directions

    The text explores the concept of the practical spirit, emphasizing three modes: contemplative, scientific, and operative. It critiques the dominance of operationalism in modern society, linking it to systemic dehumanization. I advocatesfor “transistance” to navigate beyond established orientations and connect… Continue reading

    Whispering New Directions
  • Anti-Reason in Our Times: The Renaissance of White Supremacy

    Karl Jaspers warns in “Reason and Anti-Reason in Our Time” (1952) of the unphilosophical spirit that favors comforting myths over uncomfortable truths. Contemporary white supremacist movements exemplify this “anti-reason,” exhibiting ideological rigidity and rejecting dialogue. Through the Browning’s work, “The… Continue reading

    Anti-Reason in Our Times: The Renaissance of White Supremacy
  • Beings of Enlightened Belief Are We…

    Surely some of us are tired. As I get older, as my spouse gets older, we are often very tired. Very exhausted. It can be overwhelming. But what helps us—how we frankly help each other as friends find freedom—is reminding… Continue reading

    Beings of Enlightened Belief Are We…
  • Siren Song Society: Profound Boredom – Authentic Leisure – Existential Liberation

    offer these connections to encourage people to be okay with boredom–to not see every break in labor or in study or in whatever as requiring us to find something to amuse ourselves into utter alienated distraction. Continue reading

    Siren Song Society: Profound Boredom – Authentic Leisure – Existential Liberation
  • Seneca and Existenz Part 2

    Second part of my considerations comparing/contrasting Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life with philosophers of existence… in this episode, more specifically with five figures I consider poets of existence: Walt Whitman, Rainer Maria Rilke, André Gide, Emily Dickinson, and Virginia… Continue reading

    Seneca and Existenz Part 2
  • Some thoughts on guilt and innocence

    To the degree that there is an intentionality to guilt. it would involve consciousness of failure. In this sense, I mean failure to do the right thing: either because you failed to do right on purpose or by accident. Existentially,… Continue reading

    Some thoughts on guilt and innocence
  • Loving as heeding the vocation of humanization

    Lecture from PHIL 2306, Intro to Ethics, 07March2023: Finding the ground for ethical theory and moral action. I propose that most “vicious” / vice-ridden reactivity to our circumstances arises from dehumanization. Therefore, if there is a place where we can… Continue reading

  • Professors indoctrinating students? In reality, it’s the other way around

    Rather than radicalizing them, I am more radicalized by all these millenials and zoomers who long to comprehend the world they are inheriting from people like me. Continue reading

    Professors indoctrinating students? In reality, it’s the other way around
  • Reversion, Reconciliation, and the loving struggle

    A bit of knowledge-gathering for making restorative justice a part of my way of life. Continue reading

    Reversion, Reconciliation, and the loving struggle
  • Human Nature May Not Be So Warlike After All | Wired Science

    Given the long, awful history of violence between groups of people, it’s easy to think that humans are predisposed to war. But a new study of violence in modern hunter-gatherer societies, which may hold clues to prehistoric human life, suggests… Continue reading

  • Spirits in the Material World

    Originally posted on Theoria: Having recently revisited James Hillman’s book, The Dream and the Underworld, I was excited to read Jeremy Kessler’s article in the New Atlantis on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s work, “The Hall of Fantasy,” in which he proposes that those… Continue reading

    Spirits in the Material World
  • those whose taste is lasting

    Nothing, in truth, can ever replace a lost companion. Old comrades cannot be manufactured. There is nothing that can equal the treasure of so many shared memories, so many bad times endured together, so many quarrels, reconciliations, heartfelt impulses. Friendships… Continue reading