Recently, I interviewed Ed Mooney, a Kierkegaard scholar, philosopher, and poet, among other things. The interview was carried out more like a conversation than a series of questions to be answered. In correspondence, Ed and I have agreed that this gave the interview a very unique flavor and allowed a certain play and freedom to […]
I’ve been reading and re-reading Franz Rosenzweig’s Understanding the Sick and the Healthy. It’s an incredibly fast read and well worth the time. It manages to accomplish quite a bit in its brevity (72 pages), and while the content does not feel philosophically rigorous, this is in fact its rigor. This explains the introductory essay […]
Excursions with Edward F. Mooney Part III: Whirling, Living, Dancing This post is part of an ongoing series. Part I. Part II. Dean Dettloff: You covered a lot of ground in your previous answer, Ed, anticipating a few other questions I could have followed-up with. Your previous response ended in a reflection highlighting the pin-wheeled […]
Excursions with Edward F. Mooney Part II: Intimacy-Therapy, Education, Sensibilities This post is part of an ongoing series. Part I. Part III. Dean Dettloff: Wow. I feel as though you’re already performing this kind of intimacy-therapy on me in this interview alone! The themes of renewal you trace are neither bound to psychological experience nor […]
Excursions with Edward F. Mooney Part I: Style, Lyricism, and Lost Intimacy This post is part of an ongoing series. Part II. Part III. Here is the first part of my interview with Ed Mooney. I first encountered Ed’s work as I studied the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard. Ed managed to open Kierkegaard’s work up […]
I am very pleased to announce that I will soon be posting an interview with Edward F. Mooney. Ed is an incredible scholar of Kierkegaard, Thoreau, and Bugbee, among other figures and things. I have found him inspiring in my own research, and he has been a great help to the development of this blog. […]
From “The Scientific Discipline of Religion and Christian Apologetics” by Berdyaev (notes link to the original page): Of principal significance for the science of religion is the philosophic problem concerning the character and criterion of reality. There are certain who might suspect me of docetism and monophysitism. This would be, certainly, a misunderstanding, the product […]
In The Destiny of Man, Berdyaev writes: The aim of creative inspiration is to bring forth new forms of life, but the results are the cold products of civilization, cultural values, books, pictures, institutions, good works. Good works mean the cooling down of the creative fire of love in the human heart just as a […]
In The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, Nishitani discusses the problem of nihilism in western philosophy, presenting a genealogy of sorts that includes a variety of intriguing figures. There is an entire chapter entiteld “Nihilism in Russia,” and Berdyaev curiously appears in two index entries. Until now I wouldn’t have imagined that the Kyoto School was aware […]
Human experience is a series of starts and stops. To be human is to navigate the reality of time and space, to deal with ourselves in motion. There are psychological states which help or harm our ability to be in motion, and these states are often dependent on the interplay between our own personal resolve […]