There is something human about the relationship between death and courage. Hegel makes it everything in the Master-Slave dialectic.
We suffer, struggle, dread, despair, and confront disease and dissapointment.
We free ourselves from our constraints, including the greatest internal constraint: the consciousness of inevitable death.
Ultimately, we strive—like W. E. B. Du Bois says in his description of spiritual strivings in The Souls of Black Folks.
I spent the weekend researching existentialism and continental philosophy. My guide was Robert Solomon. I read three of his books and familiarized myself with the basics of every major existentialist thinker and read excerpts of many of their works. I’ve decided, based on this research and the training I’ve had this semester, the following intellectuals so far to me seem most useful and resonant for my future career, in no particular order (and non-exhaustive):
Other areas not immediately reflected by these people but are top-of-mind (and where I’d like to learn more) include:
I feel the urge to continue learning all the time, but what I’m beginning to feel is that list is enough. I have more than enough material to work with. I have winnowed, and its time to begin the slow process of developing something new. I have no desire to further explore existentialism, phenomenology, or critical theory (in Horkheimer’s/the Frankfurt School’s sense) as attitudes or approaches. I also have little interest in postmodernism, post-structuralism, or philosophies based in semantics, e.g., Derrida, Wittgenstein, or Deleuze. Whenever I read works in these areas, I feel a sense that the authors obfuscate their claims and that they lack clear attachment to concrete reality. I have little patience for obfuscation or obscurity. If an intellectual is neither 1) lucid nor 2) endorsed from people I highly regard (like Rorty, West, or hooks), then I am content with a mere acquantaince with their ideas.
Popular intellectuals who I am notably currently content with this relatively vague familiarity are Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi Bhabha, Judith Butler, and Donna Haraway.
Everyone has different inclinations, and that’s okay.
I’m not dispositionally a cultural studies, cultural theory, or anthropology person. I am more of a sociology, social theory, or policy (public affairs) person with training in the humanities, particularly as it relates to cultural studies. For my independent studies in sociology and social theory, I’ve found Blackwell publications and the work of Jonathan H. Turner to be especially helpful. I’ve developed this expertise independently. My research into public affairs is on pause. (I have a master’s degree and two years of PhD training in it already). When I return to it, I have multiple primers and handbooks to consult. My humanities training gives me unique insight into dynamics of culture and philosophy. I’m interested in leveraging this and my background in public affairs to be more of an interdisciplinary, community-engaged, practice (or praxis) oriented intellectual rather than a disciplinary scholar or theorist.
Foremost for me is the importance of building from Cornel West’s prophetic pragmatism. West’s thinking, outlined in The American Evasion of Philosophy, will likely structure my worldview for the foreseeable future. I intend to build out his conception with greater specificity, systematicity, and logic. These efforts will involve especially researching the work of John Dewey, C. Wright Mills, and W. E. B. Du Bois.
Cornel West is one of my heroes. At this point in my life, I would say I am a disciple of him more than anyone else. We are both pragmatists interested in the struggles of political freedom, social liberation, and mundane yet vastly complex existence. West writes in his introduction to The Cornel West Reader that three related and fundamental questions motivate his writings:
The more I meditate on these questions, the more I feel a calling to explore them as well. They will likely be a foundation for my future research.
Two recommended approaches for taking notes are the dialectical journal and gut analysis.
The dialectical journal is “dialectical” because you are essentially having a conversation with the text you are reading. A dialectical journal might include:
Here’s an example of a good dialectical journal.
Gut analysis gets its name form the idea of gutting a fish. When you clean a fish for cooking, you only extract certain parts. In this analysis you answer the following:
Here’s an example of a good gut analysis.
An inquiry log is a thoughtful, pursposeful (but unpolished) space for cultivating connections between what you’re learning and your interests. The goal is to accumulate useful persepctives on various topics and steadily incubate ideas and possibilities for further investigation. The inquiry log can also be a place to document goals and progress toward projects. As I write this, I’m hoping to add at least one entry a week, even if it’s just a quick list with a brief reflection. Others uses include: