There is a sudden realization that our narrative understanding of ourselves, perhaps wrongly occupies a central place in our attention.
Tag: Existentialism
"...while you may isolate at home for a while, Thou belongs to Me, and I to Thou. And this is no longer a trial."
We are now at the beginning of the end of the modern university. The same disease that polarizes us makes the University less and less relevant. This is not an economic argument; it is an existential one. (With updated links)
I am thankful for the presence of Christ, who is all and in all.
If ... the function of organized religion turns out to be nothing more than to house justification, and canonize, the routines of mass society; if organized religion abdicates its mission to disturb individuals in the depths of their consciences, and seeks instead simply to “make converts” that will smilingly adjust to the status quo, then it deserves the most serious and uncompromising criticism.
Instead of obeying the Word and Spirit of God, the body of those who love one another precisely insofar as they have been freed from facticity and routine, the orderliness of objective mass society, one surrenders at the same time one’s human and one’s religious integrity.
As we saw from Part 1 in this series of posts (which I encourage you to read before going on), our current systems of knowledge and power are not so much concerned with the authentic identity of concrete persons (you and I). Those systems are primarily concerned with objects of study including such commonplace perspectives … Continue reading Authenticity Under Threat, Part 2: Alienation or Being Lost in Mass Society
Existentialism offers neither attractions nor peril to people who are perfectly convinced that they are headed in the right direction, that they possess the means to attain a reasonably perfect happiness, and that they have a divine mandate to remove anyone who seems inclined to interfere with this aim. Existentialism calls into question the validity, indeed the very possibility, of such an aim.
"The self exists in the same way as a border between countries, i.e. as a social institution. Both are imaginary boundaries that have a certain pragmatic convenience to them."
In the following talk, given May 20, 2021, I was happy to share much of my research on Authenticity as a moral ideal, following the work of Charles Taylor. However, I find that Taylor's work is slightly unstructured. It takes the work of someone with more political training - Hannah Arendt - to provide the … Continue reading Recorded Public Talk: Authenticity in Times of Uncertainty
Raymond Klassen - Ideals and Identities 