Cover -- Half Title -- Series -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of figures -- Acknowledgments -- Preface: on the essay form -- 1 How should I engage in community politics? -- 2 How should I relate to colonialism? -- 3 How should I understand my responsibility and show it? -- 4 How should I respond to the "Anthropocene"? -- 5 How should I involve anthroponomy in the course and prospect of my life? -- 6 What could others make of anthroponomy and how can I support them? -- In Belle Valley -- On the Farm -- Glossary -- Index.
A process begun in Pisa, Italy in April of 2016 during a workshop on political theory in the Anthropocene, The Wind ~ An Unruly Living is a philosophical exercise (askêsis, translated, following Ignatius of Loyola, as "spiritual exercise"). In his exercise, Bendik-Keymer throws to the void: the ideology of self-ownership from a society of possession. By using the Stoic kanôn, the rule of living by phûsis, he follows an element. Unhappily for the Stoic and happily for us, the wind is unruly. A swerve of currents through a social fabric, it's full of holes, all holely. Stretch and stitch as you want, it might settle more shapely tattered into light, but it will never become whole. The wind's only holesome
At the end of his life, Pierre Hadot was a professor at the College de France and he helped Michel Foucault conceptualize ethics. Hadot devoted his career to recovering the ancient conception of philosophy, according to which the discourses of universities are but a fragment of what philosophy is. His engagement with this theme helped Bendik-Keymer understand and develop a personal counter-culture to his academic work, a kind of original academics truer to the idea of the philosophical school Plato first developed. But while Plato's school developed a useful form of life, it had an ambivalent relation to democracy and to everyday people. Whereas Plato was in some ways one of the first egalitarians, he was also deeply classist in his categorization of intellectual potentials. He effectively thought some people were stupid by nature, having no philosophical worth. Hence the Academy existed outside the city, in practice exclusive and somewhat sequestered. To some extent, Plato's vision of philosophy -- at least as explained by Hadot -- had the practical point of philosophy right, but this point still needed to be rendered thoroughly democratic in the polyphony and multiple intelligences of people. Doing so coheres with what Foucault was after in his application of Hadot. It is also what Bendik-Keymer is after -- to extract what is good from original academics and make it democratic, as opposed to dumbing people down. Imagine the kind of philosophy book you might have wished for when you were growing up. Seeking a reader who would be patient and open-minded enough to live with her own questions and to walk around town with her thoughts, this book would not have a single thesis but would rather work through multiple problems and be an experience, born out of life-experience. It would not be summarizable. It would be larger than the reader and open onto different kinds of readings. This is the kind of philosophy book that was at home in the 19th century. Solar Calendar (a follow-up to Bendik-Keymer's The Ecological Life: Discovering Citizenship and a Sense of Humanity) contains six oddities: a family portrait, a parody-essay, a time-capsule poem, an exploded essay, a poetic record of an act, and an aphorism journal for a year. Their inspirations are Epictetus' notebooks, Tarkovski's "Mirror," and Apollinaire's roving "Zone." Also experiments in ecology -- the study of home -- the six sections originate in rifts that challenge us as growing people. They alternate between environmental problems and tensions within families, as if the fissures in love and in society wash back and forth between each other as we try to make a home in the world. Multiple times layer over each other like the sounds of a large, democratic city. The personal and the planetary intersect. The space before, and against, policy where politics arises as assertion opens up in glimpses, fragmenting the body and inertia of oppressive orders. Philosophy arises as a homely and idiosyncratic practice of multiple forms of intuition, reflection and intelligence for muddling through life. Painstaking exercises in being human are grounded in unconditional love and in truthfulness -- in the desire to become
This paper stages a dialectic between natural science and moral responsibility by considering the idea that deep time and planetary causality exceed moral thought in various ways. The view has been offered by the influential historian Dipesh Chakrabarty reporting on the views of Earth system scientists. Yet it seems to rest on some confusion about what moral relatedness involves. Considering how moral time can internalize planetary time, I take up how the time of the Earth can pertain to one's inner life when facing mortality and one's own integrity as a human being. For the sake of having lived with some integrity, it makes sense for people to confront the historical injustice that has led to the planetary disintegration that all beings on Earth currently face. Moral time is then historical time, the time of living in the wake of injustice for a world with planetary justice in it. Overall, the paper argues for a soulful sense of time against a socially alienated and purportedly objective sense of deep, geologic time.
A process begun in Pisa, Italy in April of 2016 during a workshop on political theory in the Anthropocene, The Wind ~ An Unruly Living is a philosophical exercise (askêsis, translated, following Ignatius of Loyola, as "spiritual exercise"). In his exercise, Bendik-Keymer throws to the void: the ideology of self-ownership from a society of possession. By using the Stoic kanôn, the rule of living by phûsis, he follows an element. Unhappily for the Stoic and happily for us, the wind is unruly. A swerve of currents through a social fabric, it's full of holes, all holely. Stretch and stitch as you want, it might settle more shapely tattered into light, but it will never become whole. The wind's only holesome.
At the end of his life, Pierre Hadot was a professor at the Collège de France — a "professor's professor" — and he helped Michel Foucault, most famously, conceptualize ethics. Hadot devoted his career to recovering the ancient conception of philosophy, according to which the discourses of universities are but a fragment of what philosophy is. His engagement with this theme helped Bendik-Keymer understand and develop a personal counter-culture to his academic work, a kind of original academics truer to the idea of the philosophical school Plato first developed in his Ἀκαδήµεια. But while Plato's school developed a useful form of life, it had an ambivalent relation to democracy and to everyday people. Whereas Plato was in some ways one of the first egalitarians by merit (especially concerning women), he was also deeply classist in his categorization of intellectual potentials. He effectively thought some people were stupid by nature, having no philosophical worth. Hence the Ἀκαδήµεια existed outside the city, in practice exclusive and somewhat sequestered. To some extent, Plato's vision of philosophy — at least as explained by Hadot — had the practical point of philosophy right, but this point still needed to be rendered thoroughly democratic in the polyphony and multiple intelligences of people. Doing so coheres with what Foucault was after in his application of Hadot. It is also what Bendik-Keymer is after — to extract what is good from original academics and make it democratic, as opposed to dumbing people down.
In an unconventionally written book that challenges the literary imagination of its readers, Jeremy Bendik-Keymer explores how wonder is central to Martha C. Nussbaums normative project. Nussbaums work is opposed to the emotional and political conditions of narcissism - the tendency to seek to control the wills of others in order to defend oneself against perceived vulnerabilities. Our capacity for wondering is important for growing beyond narcissism. Bendik-Keymer elaborates a politics of wonder that is consistent with understanding this idea. Taking issue with understandings of wonder viewing it as an emotion of surprise or delight, he develops an alternate tradition finding wonder in concert with the freedom of imagination found by degrees within much of human understanding. The result is a constructive rereading of Nussbaums oeuvre, surprising for how it disencumbers her work of some falsehoods surrounding anxiety and anger and for the ways it implies an egalitarian politics of relational autonomy more socialist than liberal. Misty Morrisons visual inquiry accompanies the book creating space for the reader to wonder. Morrison paints and prints how families involve wonder, starting with moments in her childs life when she wonders what they might see. Nussbaums Politics of Wonder is an important contribution to the philosophy of wonder and is crucial for understanding the work of a leading philosopher
Cover -- Halftitle page -- Series page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Dedication -- Contents -- Prologue -- SETTING - WHEN PEOPLE NO LONGER WONDER, DOMINATION'S HOLDING DOWN THE SYSTEM -- IN THE READER'S VOICE -- MOTET 1 - WONDER IS THE MIND'S EXCITEMENT AND PROCEEDS BY GETTING LOST TEXTS: Aristotle's De Motu Animalium, Frontiers of Justice WORD: "Lostness" -- MOTET 2 - HUMANS ARE BORN TO WONDER HOW ANOTHER'S WORLD IS POSSIBLE TEXTS: Upheavals of Thought, Fragility of Goodness WORD: "Devotion" -- Life Cycle -- MOTET 3 - WONDER IS POLITICAL, HONEST IN OUR RELATIONS TEXTS: Love's Knowledge, Political Emotions WORD: "Honesty" -- 0. Invocation -- 1. Wonder's Power -- 2. Wondering Together -- 3. Social Power -- 4. Honest in our Relations -- MOTET 4 - CAN ANGER BE WONDERFUL? IT CAN SURFACE MORAL WRONGS TEXTS: Anger and Forgiveness, Therapy of Desire WORD: "Vulnerability" -- "With Wonder" by Misty Morrison -- Thanks -- Sources -- Index -- About the author.
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