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It is my opinion that Heidegger, inspired by contact with the Eastern world and his own experience with nature, was a deep meditater. Indeed, I think any phenomenologist will miss the boat entirely unless they are thoroughly trained in meditation. Meditation allows you to fall into the thoughtless they-self without forgetting about the experience. This is the difference between a trained phenomenologist and a layman. Both are equally prone to falling into the they-self, but the phenomenologist expects it and is ready for it. The layman does not “wake up” or “return” to consciousness and then ponder about the time lost. The layman will not exercise the metacognition necessary for noting his return from the they-self, he will simply think a thought and then return to his absorption in the world. The phenomenologist however will not just return from his fall, but realize that he has “found himself”. The layman is never aware of his lostness in the way the phenomenologist is.

Read more here.

Deadline for submissions is September 1st. Details here.

Here.

Dr. Kenneth Howell, a lecturer in religious studies at the University of Illinois, has not been renewed to teach after a student accused him of hate speech in his class.  What was his hate speech?  It appears just this: clarifying what natural law moral theory has to say about homosexuality as compared to what Utilitarianism might say.  Keep in mind, he was doing this in a Catholic studies course!  Seriously, if you cannot teach the natural law in a Catholic studies course, where can you teach it?  This is either intellectual excommunication by the liberal academic elite or the act of a cowardly administration that acts out of fear (lawsuits, etc) rather than principle (this is the same university that removed editors of the student run paper after they printed the Muhammad cartoons).

News story here.

Of some interest is that the U of Illinois atheist student group (AAF – Atheists, Agnostics, and Freethinkers) has come to Dr. Howell’s defense.  They describe him, despite obvious differences of opinion, as a “friend” of the group (apparently he has helped organize some events) and are generally appalled by the censorship of ideas in what should be, at a university, a free marketplace of ideas.  Their statement can be read here.

I must say that this whole thing hits pretty close to home with me.

Here is an interesting article called the “Gospel of Scientific Materialism”.  The article goes a long way toward explaining why I find “literary atheism” (Nz, Camus, etc) so much more interesting than scientific atheism (Dawkins, etc).  The latter resides in complete self-forgetfullness, they are incapable of asking the “human questions”.  Nz and Camus are wrong, but they are not self-forgetful and they indeed do ask the human questions.

An excerpt:

“The basic thrust of a reductive science of the mind involves a move from cultural categories—“I have an obligation to care for my children”—to biological ones—“I only feel an obligation because human DNA has evolved to promote species survival.”

It is a way, in other words, to deny the reality and authority of culture.One belief unifies a great deal of social theory and philosophy of the last one hundred years, and it’s the belief that culture crushes and deforms us. Max Weber called it “the iron cage.” Jacques Derrida used fancier words, but the so-called “Metaphysics of Presence” amounts to the same thing.

This belief has been reinforced by the fact that most have located the vitalizing powers of human existence in destabilizing thrusts and eruptions that undermine established cultural patterns. Michel Foucault provides perhaps the perfect example. He was fascinated by explosions of erotic desire and vivid scenes of violence.

Duty, logical coherence, settled or inherited patterns of behavior—these are among the bad motifs in our postmodern anti-culture. Self-expression, transgression, unmasking, madness, smashing the system—they are the good motifs. The bad motifs are all associated with laws, norms, and principles that discipline the soul. The good motifs suggest an anti-discipline, a liberation of desire.

… I’m not surprised by this postmodern anti-Sinai. The old motifs put stress and tension into life. The Socratic maxim—know yourself—animated St. Augustine just as much as Albert Camus. They disagreed about the meaning of life—Augustine sought the uncertain requirements of God’s will, Camus proposed misty notions of an authentic life—but both agreed that we need to enter into ourselves. We must carefully examine our lives so that we can weigh, assess, correct, repent, and renew our efforts to live as we should.

Self-examination turns out to be endlessly painful and difficult. Therein lies the appeal of reductive explanations. They release us from the task of self-examination and the need to discipline our errant desires and disobedient wills. What matters is something impersonal, something working at a deeper level than culture and its soul-shaping agenda: the Laws of History or Physics, the Unconscious or Natural Selection. We shouldn’t underestimate the appeal of this release—and the pleasing rest it provides.”