What does melancholy mean? That depends on whom and when you ask. For example, the Cambridge Dictionary tell us that melancholy is "sadness that lasts for a long period of time, often without any obvious reason". If we consult the word's etymology - Greek melankholia, from melas, melan- ‘black’ + kholē ‘bile’ - we are brought back to its long history of medical theory, as it developed from the ancient, … Continue reading Melancholy: Brief History
Food For Thought From Baruch Spinoza
What is your usual way of reacting to another person's actions or words? Where do you start? If we are honest with ourselves (at least ourselves), how often do we begin with a genuine effort to understand the other? “I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to … Continue reading Food For Thought From Baruch Spinoza
Whose Monster Is It Anyway?
“Most strangers, gods and monsters - along with various ghosts, phantoms and doubles who bear a family resemblance - are, deep down, tokens of fracture within the human psyche. They speak to us of how we are split between conscious and unconscious, familiar and unfamiliar, same and other. And they remind us that we have … Continue reading Whose Monster Is It Anyway?
A Thought on History and Identity
“The past is a cemetery of promises which havenot been kept.”Paul Ricoeur Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) was a French philosopher who contributed to combining phenomenological descriptions of human reality with hermeneutic interpretations. The way I experience something and the way I make sense of it influence each other and are interwoven into one whole. This thinking … Continue reading A Thought on History and Identity
Problem With Scapegoating
Have you noticed how, sometimes, a little too often, scapegoating someone or some group of people is used as a political solution to a national identity crisis? It seems the hope is that finding an external 'foe' and offloading all 'our' problems on them as the purported cause of our woes should help bolster people's … Continue reading Problem With Scapegoating
Thoughts on Embodied Understanding and Carnal Hermeneutics
When things are in your mind, are they also in your body? If yes, is your body anything more than a physical container for your mind? If not, how can there be things like painful memories, hurtful words or wounds of history? Western traditions of thought have a long history of contrasting mind and body. … Continue reading Thoughts on Embodied Understanding and Carnal Hermeneutics
Can We Suspend Our Assumptions?
Edmund Husserl, the founder of the philosophical tradition called phenomenology, introduced the idea of bracketing or suspending our habitual assumptions about the world. He called this method by the Greek word epoché, which has deep historical roots stretching to the ancient Greek philosophy of scepticism that emphasised suspension of judgments. Importantly for Husserl, his method … Continue reading Can We Suspend Our Assumptions?
Human: a Continuous Project
Michel de Montaigne, in his essay 'That Men by Various Ways Arrive at the Same End', paints a conflicted portrait of human nature: "Man (in good earnest) is a marvelous vain, fickle, and unstable subject, and on whom it is very hard to form any certain and uniform judgment."Michel de Montaigne Very hard indeed - … Continue reading Human: a Continuous Project
Humans as Liminal Beings
German philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels - a recognised phenomenologist interested, among other things, in the theme of a 'stranger' or 'alien' - suggests that humans are liminal beings. He presents this idea in his book Phenomenology of the Alien: Basic Concepts. What does Waldenfels mean? In the first chapter of the book, he introduces and explains … Continue reading Humans as Liminal Beings
A Thought On Change
In a recent conversation about the need for change in view of the multitude of global challenges we face in this, our lifetime, I was reminded of the quote I read in a wonderfully thought-stimulating novel by Matt Haig, The Humans. Indeed, are we not curious creatures? We fear change and crave it, avoid it … Continue reading A Thought On Change
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