Preview: /Review: Jennifer A. Herdt, Forming Humanity: Redeeming the German Bildung Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 312 pages./ Jennifer A. Herdt’s book Forming Humanity: Redeeming the German Bildung Tradition (hereafter FH) traces the post-Kantian secularization of Bildung from its roots in Pietism through its development into the human autocracy of…
Preview: /Review: Steven Collins, Wisdom as a Way of Life: Theravāda Buddhism Reimagined (Columbia University Press, 2020), 304 pages./ Steven Collins was in the process of finalizing his manuscript and final academic work on Buddhism when he passed away unexpectedly at the age of sixty-six in February 2018. Although unfinished, the manuscript was in circulation among his colleagues…
Abstract: Why awaken the soul to justice if the only result can be to increase awareness of the futility of aspiring to justice in the world? Zwicky documents challenges to the belief that teaching philosophy will result in a fairer polity and suggests that perception of being’s integrity sustains pursuit of philosophy as a way of life. DOWNLOAD PDF Keywords:…
Preview: “America does not think much of its philosophers,” Douglas Anderson writes in his introduction to Philosophy Americana. “We do not teach philosophy in our high schools. A majority in America have no idea what philosophy is about or why it might be interesting, if not important.” Perhaps that lack of appreciation for philosophy is coeval with its beginnings…
Abstract: This paper starts with a detailed analysis of Jan Assmann’s qualitative distinction between cultural memory and communicative memory. The purpose of this analysis is to highlight both the strengths and the limitations of this seminal distinction, and to also reflect on what cultural theorists and contemporary artists could learn through Assmann’s distinction since…
Abstract: The paper presents an interpretation of Platonism, the seeds of which can be found in the writings of Gödel and Wittgenstein. Although it is widely accepted that Wittgenstein is an anti-Platonist the author points to some striking affinities between Gödel’s and Wittgenstein’s accounts of mathematical concepts and the role of feeling and…
Abstract: Philosophy nurtures its actuality from questions, or a call that comes from and leads to a lived risk. This paper embraces that risk in directly responding to nine of the fifteen questions in the Call for Papers for the issue, Philosophy as a Way of Life in a Time of Crisis. Attentive to the idea of PWL, I listened for each question’s…
Abstract: In a world described or experienced as unfair, what can philosophical practitioners propose in order to help individuals and communities strive for a meaningful life? One answer, empirically informed by the author’s practice as philosophical counselor in therapeutic, self-care and organizational contexts, is five principles for the cultivation of philosophical health, namely mental heroism, deep orientation, critical creativity, deep…
Abstract: This paper examines philosophy as a way of life in a time of crisis by focusing on Buddhism, envisioned as a path exercising the faculty of “mindfulness.” From this standpoint of “Buddhist philosophy as mindful exercise,” and following the Kyōto School’s inspiration of engaging a dialogue with Western traditions, including modern psychology and medicine, the paper reflects upon the…
Abstract: Is the Stoic sage a possible or desirable ideal for contemporary men and women, as we enter into difficult times? Is he, as Seneca presents him, the very best person for a crisis? In order to examine these questions, Part 1 begins from what Irene Liu calls the “standard” modern conceptions of the sage as either a kind of…