Creatively Advancing into Novelty
“One of Nietzsche’s objections to Christianity was, he said, that Christianity depends on the notion that Nature has brought forth this sick creature of which it (Christianity) is the cure; and I think psychoanalysis sounds like that. It’s brought forth something sick, something “lacking” of which it (psychoanalysis) is the cure. “Lack” is the absence…
Of course critical reflection is fundamental to teaching and scholarship, but fetishizing disbelief as a sign of intelligence has contributed to depleting our cultural resources. Creative work, in whatever field, depends upon commitment, the energy of participation and the ability to become absorbed in works of literature, art and science. That type of absorption is…
Above is a poster design I did for an event hosted by writer, philosopher, theologian, Peter Rollins. Get tickets here.
Marika Rose makes a fantastic point in the tweet pictured. Of course I must point out that this tweet is taken out of context and is, in fact, part of a larger twitter thread which was about the nature and role of academic criticism. I thought, however, that this particular tweet summed up Marika’s point…
Many people of faith feel a desire to speak about that which is most precious to them, about that which has transformed their lives, that which they feel has liberated them. Yet that needs to be contrasted with the concern that every time we speak of that source, that place of liberation, we somehow do…
I think a case could be made that the emergence of digital communication and online social media has made religious hypocrisy a more dangerous temptation today than we often recognize. Lee Siegel in his book Against the Machine, discusses how we hide behind false, “phantom” identities on the internet. It’s a medium we think fosters…
In the good old days of Really Existing Socialism, a joke popular among dissidents was used to illustrate the futility of their protests. In the fifteenth century, when Russia was occupied by Mongols, a peasant and his wife were walking along a dusty country road; a Mongol warrior on a horse stopped at their side…
To understand this let us recall Sartre’s famous reflection on a Parisian waiter. He once saw a waiter who was so absorbed in his role as a waiter that he seemed to define himself in terms of that job. Sartre wrote of how this young man was acting in a mode of inauthenticity because he…
Sometimes the thing we desire most is the very thing that prevents us from obtaining it.
…just like Alcoholics Anonymous is the place where you go when you’ve got dependence on alcohol, the community of believers should be the place you go because you’ve got a dependency on religion. …and this for me is the good news of Christianity. It’s not that we repress our anxieties and we “believe” in God…