August 2003
The Archives
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Can love save the world?
08.27.03 | Permalink | 5 CommentsBiblical scholar Walter Wink offers a fresh interpretation of Jesus on violence. His explanation of “turning the other cheek” is unique and enlightening: Jesus gives some snarky advice on the “pimp slap.”
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Indie god-talk
08.26.03 | Permalink | 11 CommentsThe point of the humanities, staying with Rorty, is to shake things up, to help us imagine new ways of living and being. He argues that the humanities offer “a desirable replacement of bad questions like ‘What is Being?’, ‘What is really real?’ and ‘What is man?’ with the sensible question ‘Does anybody have any […]
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Contempt for the word
08.26.03 | Permalink | Comments Off on Contempt for the wordLanguagehat gives us this quote to ponder: An extraordinary contempt for the word, or what might even be called a loathing for the word has seized humanity. Confidence in the notion that human beings are capable of persuading one another with words and language has vanished in the most radical sense. Everything associated with parlare […]
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Postmodernism’s point
08.21.03 | Permalink | Comments Off on Postmodernism’s pointStill following up on Rorty, the point of “postmodernism” is the rejection of the project of philosophical intellectuals, that is, the hope that discovering reality-as-it-really-is “would end, once and for all, the process of reflection on what to do with ourselves.” In religious language, it is the naming of Truth as an idol.
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The indie intellectual
08.21.03 | Permalink | 5 CommentsRichard Rorty argues that there have been three major movements of intellectuals: the religious intellectual, the philosophical intellectual, and the literary intellectual. An intellectual, says Rorty, is anyone who seeks personal authenticity and has the wherewithal to consume cultural artifacts to try and get there. (I would add that the intellectual feels the right to […]
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Mi gato no esta aqui
08.20.03 | Permalink | Comments Off on Mi gato no esta aquiSo today I find out that it didn’t matter that I skipped most of my college Spanish classes: Dear Mr. Hunter: Excuse my precarious English. (I read it better than write). I read your book review of Slavoj Zizek´s book “Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?” appeared in Ethics News & Views. I would like to translate […]
