Browsed by
Category: religion

Dying. Suffering. Death.

Dying. Suffering. Death.

Comments 2 comments

I have suffered death since 3— Grandmother’s open casket— casting a shadow on everything since I have suffered the death of insects—some drowned, some squashed many on their backs refusing to go gently I have suffered the death of animals, some by my hand— both accidental and with tear-shuddering compassion— some on the vet’s table some on the bathroom floor all struggling, gasping: suffering. I have suffered the dying of family, never death itself, that moment. The hospital bed. The…

Read More Read More

Suffering and the “Full Human Experience”

Suffering and the “Full Human Experience”

Comments 0 Comment

If life does not always tend toward the tragic (and I’m not convinced that it doesn’t), then it does tend toward the “son-of-a-bitch!” in a variety of ways. In this vein, Nietzsche recognized that the problem of suffering is not so much that we suffer, but that we crave an answer to why we suffer. And this in the sense of: to what end? What is the meaning of our suffering? —Not only do we experience suffering, but we suffer…

Read More Read More

After the Funeral

After the Funeral

Comments 0 Comment

Tragic, hard—this life. I do not ask why. I do ask for kindness. I do ask for some level of nuance in the face of uncertainty in the face of death. — Do not give me a child’s reason for believing in your “Amen.” Tell me of how he preached love, charity, and non-violence and my fleshy soul will be moved, eager for more— just do not denigrate or write off this life, so tragic so hard.

Nihilism, Hell, and Self-Interest

Nihilism, Hell, and Self-Interest

Comments 2 comments

Often when people fear hell, they fear it in the sense of an afterlife of eternal torment, or, perhaps more sophisticatedly, eternal separation from God. As others have noted, though, hell exists on earth in a variety of forms. For example, you can read Sartre’s “No Exit” as making the case that “hell is other people.” As an introvert, I find that line of thinking attractive, but I think a more pressing form of hell on earth is putting one’s…

Read More Read More

Reverence

Reverence

Comments 2 comments

Whether false idols or a true god, I am troubled by the idea of worship. Not because I am too good. Not because I lack humility. There is something unthinking in that word “worship.” There is something crudely objectifying, distancing in the notion.

Compassion and the Epistemology of Suffering Thresholds

Compassion and the Epistemology of Suffering Thresholds

Comments 0 Comment

In an attempt to get clearer, and less hyperbolic, about the value of suffering, I earlier suggested the idea of a suffering threshold, which is the “point” at which suffering loses its (positive) value and warrants easing. The idea of easing suffering leads directly to compassion/pity and this passage from section 338 of Nietzsche’s the Gay Science: The whole economy of my soul and the balance effected by “distress,” the way new springs and needs break open, the way in…

Read More Read More

From Faith to a Pernicious Idolatry

From Faith to a Pernicious Idolatry

Comments 2 comments

1. You shall have no other gods before me. 2. You shall not make for yourself any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations…

Read More Read More

Religious Practice and the Limits of Philosophy

Religious Practice and the Limits of Philosophy

Comments 0 Comment

In reading Siderits’s excellent Buddhism as Philosophy I have come to realize the following problem. If a religion has its base in philosophy, if its central tenets are supposed to follow from the use of reason and argument, then none of its conclusions can ever be firm enough to ground religious practice. There will always be difficult objections and questions that cannot be answered in a way sufficient to allow one to say, “I know this is true and I…

Read More Read More

Buddhism and the Genius of Meditation

Buddhism and the Genius of Meditation

Comments 0 Comment

Enlightened? No! Buddhist master? No. Buddhist? Working on it. But Buddhist or no, I have been practicing a form of Buddhist meditation, again, for the past month and four days. This is something I’ve been doing (mostly) off and on for the past fifteen years or so. I’m pretty terrible at it. In fact, I composed the gist of this essay while “meditating” this morning. I’ve got a nice spot in an upstairs room in the house I’m renting in…

Read More Read More

Why So Many Disagreements Are Just So Damn Intractable

Why So Many Disagreements Are Just So Damn Intractable

Comments 2 comments

In a recent essay, I made a distinction between what I called epistemic reasons and purely causal reasons. The former are potentially truth preserving (capable of providing epistemic justification) the latter are not even potentially truth preserving (and thus are incapable of providing epistemic justification). In this essay, I’m going to appeal to the same basic distinction regarding reasons that do and do not provide epistemic justification, but I’m going to refer to them simply as epistemic reasons (ERs) and…

Read More Read More