Thursday, June 24, 2010

Well begun is half done

I've been thinking about creating a blog about philosophy and religion for a while. My motivation for doing so is to create a platform for me to explore my interests in philosophy and religion and, most importantly, to interact with others with similar interests.

I am not a professional philosopher. However, I am decently familiar with the Western canon and have a framework with which to make sense of much of the philosophical material I encounter. I have no bias toward continental or analytic philosophy - I admire the questions that continental philosophers pose even as I appreciate the utility of analytic methods. I'm interested in metaphysics and, to a lesser degree, epistemology, and generally uninterested in ethics, aesthetics and that sort of applied stuff.

I am not a religious person. If I had to choose a label, I would pick some combination of atheist, pantheist, mystic or Unitarian Universalist. I think there is poor evidence for the existence of a personal deity who takes an active interest in the lives of humans. Nevertheless, I think there are creative ways of fostering dialog between religious and non-religious people. I continue to be fascinated by the philosophical, theological and devotional aspects of religion. In particular, I see mysticism as an interesting response to the philosophical exhaustion that characterizes the exit from modern philosophy.

To facilitate my interests in philosophy and religion, I also take a great interest in learning languages. I have working knowledge of French, German and Chinese, and have dabbled in Greek, Hebrew, Arabic and Scandinavian. Maybe one day I will read "Fear and Trembling" in the original Danish.

In the beginning, I will probably post random stuff that catches my fancy, though I hope that the posts will settle into some semi-regular format. It would be great if we could set up a reading group where we worked through short passages of philosophical writings in the original languages on a fortnightly basis. Comment below if you're interested or have any other ideas to suggest.

No comments:

Post a Comment