“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
Conversation About Creative Flow
A blissful state - the feeling that everything just works and falls into place effortlessly. A state of creative flow. But what does it look like in the brain? What processes are happening there when we are in a state of creative flow, and what can these findings teach us? In this post, I share … Continue reading Conversation About Creative Flow
Are There Value-Free Facts?
When I say that my cat's name is Vito, I make a factual statement. It describes a state of affairs with seemingly no value judgments involved. The fact that my cat has this name is just that - a value-free fact - and says nothing (cannot say) about what my cat's (or any other cat's) … Continue reading Are There Value-Free Facts?
Philosophical Concepts: Poststructuralism
What is poststructuralism as a philosophical concept? The 'post' in poststructuralism indicates that it is 'after' structures, which means it can be understood as a set of critical attitudes developing as a response to structuralism. Very briefly: Structuralism argues that the meaning of something is not inherent to it, waiting to be discovered, but is … Continue reading Philosophical Concepts: Poststructuralism
humanfactor 