Philosophy is interesting to me. Philosophers try to explain everything, including explaining, philosophy, philosophers and what everything is. I like explanations.
My current philosophical turn commenced with the discovery of Hubert Dreyfus' 'Existentialism in Literature and Film' course from Berkeley via iTunesU. He has three other courses up at the moment - two on his main subject, Martin Heidegger, who proved a good philosopher, even if he was a Nazi and never apologised or anything.
John Searle, also at Berkeley, does a philosophy of mind course which seemed a bit disorganized in what made it onto the web, and a philosophy of society, which was better. Jeffrey Wattles does a course on Artistic Living which I listened to because it included some Heidegger lectures, but in fact it had a lot more than that. He is a lovely man, and the course is well worth a listen. He is an adherent (?) of the book of Urantia - quite an unusual thing.
Prior to all this, I had had a very interesting experience at an American Association of Religion conference - John Milbank and Slavoj Zizek as part of a panel. Zizek's argued that 'belief' in these days tends to come from a neurotic distinctiveness - asserting yourself against what you fear is really true because you see a powerful majority that believes it. The simple example would be the Christian who, when asked 'Has being a Christian been a good or a bad thing for you?' hesitates and weighs their choice, thinking that maybe it has all been a rather bad job, rather than simply saying 'Yes, obviously, since salvation is indispensible and available only through Jesus.' Zizek concluded that all atheists (such as he) depended for their atheism on a residual someone, out there, believing in God on their behalf. John Milbank was less clear to me then and I can't remember what he said. I think he was arguing that it was not inviting irrationality to believe in God. These two have a book - 'The Monstrosity of Christ' - which I am almost finished - in which they battle like two Iron Chef's for whom Chairman Kaga has chosen that it should be a "Hegel Contest!"
Before I quite finished it, I started reading 'Philosophy as Metanoetics' by Hajime Tanabe (Jeff Wattles put me on to it). He (Tanabe) was a student of Heidegger, became a significant Japanese philosopher, and in WW II had a sort of conversion to a brand of Shin Buddhism which emphasised repentance - abandoning self-power (jiriki) as a bad job, surrendering to absolute critique, and finding the 'great void' of being graciously yielding other-power (tariki). It has been strangely strong stuff. After growing up in a Christian community, I have a new appreciation and respect for repentance. I think he may be absolutely right - repentance is the way.
This is a bit of biog/sketch of my exposure and interests. I will write the occasional review as blog posts. This is a 'page' which is more enduring...
