So, I've been meaning for a long time to do a series of posts outlining my philosophical views. It's a desire that has been fostered by many, many debates on Facebook that have, against all of the evidence that it is a moronic timesuck, led me to believe it has a certain worth, though one that is only dictated by those one interacts with on it. The other impetus to this, aside from all of the research I have been doing for my forthcoming thesis that will be finished in about a year's time, has been the writing of Daniel Fincke of the Camels with Hammers blog. Dan is a professor of philosophy at Fordham, amongst other universities, and through his writing and my interactions with him at the Reason Rally and on Facebook have proved, a phenomenal talent at communicating complex ideas very clearly and accessibly. It's a skill that, above all others, I wish to attain, and I can't thank him enough for all of the work that he does.
This is not necessarily the first true post in this series, which I hope to seriously devote time to over the summer, but a placeholder. I plan to detail my thoughts on ethics, politics, aesthetics, and other areas, all of which are aimed at deconstructing and eliminating the kinds of thought processes that I believe are, subtly or overtly, enabling of authoritarian ways of thinking, via Theodor Adorno. Kant's Categorical Imperative will be a particular target of mine, as will most Enlightenment-era ways of thinking.
I want to lay out an ethical imperative to action and social justice, driven not by some airy notion of freedom or goodness, but by the need to do so that is not entirely able to be categorized or explained, but that is nevertheless demanded of all of us. Levinas and Simon Critchley are my inspirations here, though certainly without the theological strains of the former. In short, I want to firmly answer the seemingly constant accusation of the more fundamental faithful that to be faithless is to be morally deficient. One does not, in my view, need to have an absolute demand of fealty in order to be a decent person.
I will attempt to do this as soon as I have the time, hopefully as soon as school is over three weeks' time. I hope you'll stick around to watch.
