George Grant argued that “Modern technology is not simply an extension of human making through the power of a perfected science, but a new account of what it is to know and to make in which both activities are changed by their co-penetration. We hide the difficulty of thinking that novelty, . . . . Continue Reading »
Shestov again, from a 1921 letter to his daughters: “When the infant grows up, he is no longer attracted by his mother’s breast, but it would not be natural if, from the first day, he rejected it. When we ascend a staircase we leave behind the lower step in passing to the higher, but . . . . Continue Reading »
Shestov again, summarizing the implications of Kierkegaard’s insight that sin is an effort to shore ourselves up against our createdness: “The Nothingness that the tempter pointed out to our forefather prompted his fear before the unlimited will of the Creator; and he rushed to . . . . Continue Reading »
In an essay on Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard, Lev Shestov traces Kierkegaard’s pilgrimage away from his youthful enthusiasm for Hegel toward biblical faith. On Kierkegaard’s reading, Hegel urged that philosophy and spirit transcend the finite and silly obsessions of Scripture, which . . . . Continue Reading »
The heart of Heidegger’s critique of the technological society is his notion of “standing reserve,” the idea that matter is just there, without an inherent order or qualities, plastic to whatever shapes the whims of human will want to impose on it. He says, “Everywhere . . . . Continue Reading »
It’s obvious that, in Heidegger’s terms, human art remake earth -stone is remade into sculpture, the components of paint into a scene or a portrait. Heidegger also insists that art remakes world, reshapes the human environment by redrawing boundaries of earth and world. Heidegger . . . . Continue Reading »
In his essay on the “Origin of the Work of Art,” Heidegger attacks the traditional metaphysics of form and matter. There is no formless matter, he insists, and human beings must take account of the particular forms in which matter comes to us in order to make use of it. The essential . . . . Continue Reading »
Brian Brock writes of Heidegger’s essay on “Nietzsche’s Word”: “The concept of ‘art’ as a replacement for Descartes’s ‘certainty’ attracts Heidegger not least because a public and social horizon is built into it: truth grows from an . . . . Continue Reading »
In his preface to the Philosophy of Right, Hegel famously remarks that the owl of Minerva takes flight only as dusk is falling, which is to say that philosophy comes only at the end of an age, far too late in the day to tell us how the world ought to be; it can at most merely ponder what already . . . . Continue Reading »
Heidegger describes two ways of assessing the weight of a hammer. On the one hand, we can put it on a scale and get a numerical read-out. It weighs three pounds. What it’s for doesn’t make any difference. It’s a generic object on which gravity exerts a particular force, which we . . . . Continue Reading »
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