Sunday, November 6, 2005

evolving in “Literature”



Many years ago, I tried to imagine a kind of neoJungian / Heideggerian inquiry I called “literary anthropology.” But soon I showed the good sense of shelving the matter.

Saturday, October 1, 2005

A moderate naturalism:
beyond Intelligent Design creationism



I believe that the “Intelligent Design” creationism (“IDc” hereafter) controversy in the U.S. is very important—easily important relative to Habermas’ interest in clarifying the place of religion in constitutional patriotism—as a majority of USAmericans are religious, and that fact is vital for Republican control of U.S. geopolitics (though only a tiny minority of USAmericans support IDc in science education). This might also be important to persons outside the U.S., since the U.S. issue may register a very important version of the growing pains of late modernity globally: gaining fundamentalist/evangelical reconciliation—without religious resentment—toward secularist politics (let alone the issue of jihadist violence). IDc may be the ultimate religious recourse against scientific modernity (echoing the legacy of religious philosophy—the so-called Argument from Design of late-medieval natural theology, which became the “blind watchmaker” of 18th century “science”—while it was an aim of both Newton and Kant to keep the world safe for religious hope).

Sunday, September 25, 2005

a note about doing ontology



“Metaphysics,” as traditionally conceived, is a mythical—> conceptualist (pre-scientific) approach to realism. I call that metaphysicalism. It’s what Heidegger set out to deconstruct.

But there’s a sense of metaphysics that’s unavoidable: meta-physics, in the literal sense, which perhaps becomes philosophy of mathematics (as, e.g., we humans don’t yet have the mathematical capacity to describe quantum foam; see Lee Smolin, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, 2001). Worries about realism in mathematics are no metaphysicalism, since we’re in the “same” universe with other, yet-undiscovered forms of intelligent life (SETI optimist here).

Saturday, September 10, 2005

a post-Habermasian aspect of linguistic existence



[penultimate paragraph deleted from a discussion group posting}

In such a narrativization, “[he]” is a figure of speech employed in a hermeneutical interest—no instrumentalization of the other (proven by this present mode of assertion?—this self-reflectivity of the narrating?)—which, [he], you, might keep in mind relative to my critical comments at your blog today! (and, so, there not be offended)—maybe appreciating (like I need to) a feature of the creative process in formulating critical stances (interpretive possibilities turned to critical use), not so much that you are really implicated, but that one can be so implicated (as shown by experiment with appearances), while I, in this very stating, express (I hope) the decenteredness of a critical developmentality. No matter whether you are implicated validly in that other commentary (at your blog), the kind of problematic displayed—the kind of dynamic so framed—happens and is worth entertaining.

“So, onward with the learning that never ends (in a hermeneutical landscape where we always already are).”



(so overwhelmingly thankful he’s still sheltered from any storms—or the inevitably giant California earthquake)


Sunday, April 3, 2005

amen


Belonging In stillness

A boy fashioned a dramatist, who fashioned a philosophical priest,
who fashioned a great papacy. Curtain.

The Church is a child of evolution.



I think that a Heideggerian view of Christianity works best.
But that’s beyond the scope of this note.

Powers of nature, Being, God, Historicality, Event of Appropriation (evolutionarity?).