2023-01Editorial
The Spiritual Exercise of Sankofa: Toward a Post-Colonial, Pluralistic, and Intercultural Philosophy

Preview: Philosophy has notably struggled in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to come to terms with how it participated in the erasure and invisibility of persons across the globe. Western philosophy over hundreds of years found itself immersed in the colonial project, in all its economic, social, political, legal, disciplinary, and aesthetic dimensions. Its logic of…

2021-02Editorial
Pressing Questions for the Philosophical Life in a Time of Crisis

Preview: 2020, the year the coronavirus pandemic spread globally, marked the twenty-fifth year since the publication of Pierre Hadot’s work Philosophy as a Way of Life (translated by co-author Michael Chase). In that time, what began as the research specialization of just a few scholars has become a growing area of philosophical and metaphilosophical inquiry, bringing together researchers…

2021-01Editorial
Ancient Philosophical Inspirations for Pandemiconium

Preview: At times, the COVID-19 Pandemic has spent words of their value. We academic philosophers have written many articles in relation to it, and plenty of social media posts, as well as other discourse on it. It all seems effete to stop the flames we have kindled that led to this global tragedy. Our civilizational unsustainability and instability have borne…

2020-04Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
Polish Philosophy of Culture Today: A Promising Route for Contemporary Philosophy

Preview: It has been my observation that Poland is unique for having a philosophy of culture tradition that has theoretical depth and insight into the origins and role of philosophy, popular breadth throughout Polish philosophy in a variety of departments, institutes and programs, and for its cultural relevancy. Yet, this tradition is largely unknown…

2019-04Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
Hadotian Considerations on Buddhist Spiritual Practices

Preview: /Review: David Fiordalis ed., Buddhist Spiritual Practices: Thinking with Pierre Hadot on Buddhism, Philosophy, and the Path (Berkeley, CA: Mangalam Press, 2018), 333 pages./ David Fiordalis’ collection Buddhist Spiritual Practices: Thinking with Pierre Hadot on Buddhism, Philosophy and the Path (hereafter BSP) represents an invaluable contribution in what promises to be a fruitful emerging research…

2019-03Thematic Section
Meditating on the Vitality of the Musical Object: A Spiritual Exercise Drawn from Richard Wagner’s Metaphysics of Music

Abstract: In 1870, Wilhelm Richard Wagner (1813-1883) wrote an essay to celebrate the centennial of Beethoven’s birth. In this essay Wagner made the case that music is, unlike any other object we create or are attentive to in experience, in an immediate analogical relationship with the activity of the Schopenhauerian “will” and is always enlivened. By drawing on this idea,…

2018-03Thematic Section
Philosophical Wandering as a Mode of Philosophy in Cultural Life: From Diogenes of Sinope to Cornel West

Abstract: In this essay, I defend philosophical wandering not only as an approach to doing philosophy, but also as an important force to incite critical reflection in cultural life. I argue that philosophical wanderers have an embodied, errant praxis, supporting wisdom whenever they engage with others. For these philosophers reflection is not given in a series of systematic assertions, nor…

2018-01Forum
Utopia as the Gift of Ethical Genius: Ernst Cassirer’s Theory of Utopia

Abstract: In this essay, I explore Cassirer’s brief discussion of utopia in An Essay on Man, as likely built upon Kant’s theory of genius as from the Critique of Judgment. This exploration of Cassirer’s theory of utopia lays the groundwork to argue that a utopia is the dynamic product (work) of the “ethical genius,” a work that advances culture by luring…

2017-02Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
In Quest of Platonopolis: Excerpts from Research Visits to Philosophical Communities

Preview: In general, the idea of a completely contemplative life, of a studious leisure whose pleasantness would be still further enhanced by the pure pleasure of the spiritual friendship, exerted on all of Antiquity a fascination which seemed to only increase at the end of the Roman Empire. One hundred years after Plotinus, Augustine too, before his conversion, would…