2021-03Thematic Section
Against Autoimmune Self-Sacrifice: Religiosity, Messianicity, and Violence in Derrida’s “Faith and Knowledge” and in Classical Rabbinic Judaism

31/12/2021  / 
DOI: 10.14394/eidos.jpc.2021.0025

Abstract: In this essay, I argue that a comparison of Derrida’s “Faith and Knowledge” to the texts and thought of classical rabbinic Judaism can illuminate new conceptual connections among the different elements of Derrida’s thought.  Both Derrida and the rabbinic texts can be viewed as affirming a type of “holding back” and “allowing the other to be,” stances…

Jan Molina

2021-03Thematic Section
“A Certain Way of Thinking”: Derrida, Weil and the Philippi Hymn

31/12/2021  / 
DOI: 10.14394/eidos.jpc.2021.0024

Abstract: Toward the beginning of one of her notebooks, Simone Weil interrupts a dense series of reflections on war, force and prestige to write, in parentheses: “(To think on God, to love God, is nothing else than a certain way of thinking on the world.)” In some respects, this one sentence is a crystallization of everything Weil wrote about God. The…

Jan Molina

2021-02Thematic Section
Dialectic into Dialogos and the Pragmatics of No-thingness in a Time of Crisis

30/10/2021  / 
DOI: 10.14394/eidos.jpc.2021.0017

Abstract: Nishitani and Neoplatonism both argue that overcoming the nihilism of non-being requires a confrontation with, and cultivation of, the experience of nothingness. This paper argues that the appreciation of nothingness is best realized in the practice of dialectic into dialogos, as adapted from the Socratic tradition. We argue that dialectic equips the self…

Jan Molina

2021-02Thematic Section
Philosophy Plays: A Neo-Socratic Way of Performing Public Philosophy

30/10/2021  / 
DOI: 10.14394/eidos.jpc.2021.0016

Abstract: This paper provides an explanatory rationale within a theoretical philosophical framework for the Philosophy Plays project as a call to public philosophy, conceived as a way of life and a form of communal therapy for the mind.  The Philosophy Plays aim is to introduce philosophy to the general public through philosophical presentations by professional philosophers incorporating drama. Like Plato’s…

Jan Molina

2021-02Thematic Section
Recovering Wildness: “Earthy” Education and Field Philosophy

30/10/2021  / 
DOI: 10.14394/eidos.jpc.2021.0015

Abstract: This essay invites a recovery of “wildness” as a way for philosophers to respond to the present moment which includes: an ongoing global pandemic, economic uncertainty, increasing cultural division, and a crisis in higher education broadly that persistently threatens the status of philosophy programs. Drawing on the American thinkers John William Miller and John Dewey and elaborating…

Jan Molina

2021-02Thematic Section
Reclaiming Time Aesthetically: Hadot, Spiritual Exercises and Gardening

30/10/2021  / 
DOI: 10.14394/eidos.jpc.2021.0014

Abstract: Pierre Hadot’s legacy is a vision of ancient philosophy not only as a system of abstract concepts and logical procedures but as a practical philosophical methodology. A key element of this interpretation is consideration of ancient philosophical practice as a series of spiritual exercises to improve one’s own life. The present paper aims to show, more humbly, that by highlighting…

Jan Molina

2021-01Thematic Section
Another Kind of Octopus

30/06/2021  / 
DOI: 10.14394/eidos.jpc.2021.0006

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…

Jan Molina

2021-01Thematic Section
Five Principles of Philosophical Health for Critical Times: From Hadot to Crealectics

30/06/2021  / 
DOI: 10.14394/eidos.jpc.2021.0005

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…

Jan Molina

2021-01Thematic Section
Living Mindfully Through Crisis: Searching for Life Advice in the “Philosophy-Medicine” of Buddhism

30/06/2021  / 
DOI: 10.14394/eidos.jpc.2021.0004

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…

Jan Molina

2021-01Thematic Section
A Good Person for a Crisis? On the Wisdom of the Stoic Sage (in Himself & for Us)

30/06/2021  / 
DOI: 10.14394/eidos.jpc.2021.0003

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…

Jan Molina