The Secular Frontier

It has long been known that the gospels have to some extent appropriated the famous figure John the Baptist and repurposed him for Christians purposes to note that while John is the greatest among men, the newly developed Christian community was greater: ... Read Article

Bart's new book that I'll be blogging about on Jesus' revolutionary ethics will be out soon, and here is a taste about Jesus and charity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeyHtCBcY8k ... Read Article

Our Vice President Ed did a kiosk article recently on the origin of evil that was also featured on Debunking Christianity. Here is the link: https://infidels.org/kiosk/article/why-adam-and-eve-sinned/ ... Read Article

What we find in the historical record about Jesus' death is that it all converges on the idea that Jesus' death is the responsibility of the Jewish elite.  The Roman leader Pilate is exonerated, for instance, even though he orders the crucifixion.  In m ... Read Article

Ehrman's new book on Jesus' innovative ethics is coming out later this month so I will be blogging about that, and I will supplement this with Goicoechea's book on Christianity and personhood. Here's a preview: From the blurb: From the New Yo ... Read Article

Bart looks at how Jesus' ethics of service and avoiding exerting power over others contrasts with ancient Greek ethics centered on finding contentment (quite interesting, though I think we find the service model with Socrates giving thanks for the poison ... Read Article

Ehrman's new book is coming out and in it he will argue for Jesus' radical message of love of stranger even outside of one's community. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWnYqZNyEn4&list=PLmutpnyeVQcrRNOzPWdEothXcCVo2Npfv ... Read Article

In Bart's new book he argues the lack of atonement theology in Luke-Acts reflects Luke going back to the historical Jesus who did not think God required a sacrifice. Ehrman's basic thought seems to be there was an historical Jesus who in the tradition of ... Read Article

Heidegger's grave in Meßkirch (wiki) Derrida lecturing at EHESS, 1990s (wiki) Foreword: Of course, most people live their lives “as though” the next moment won’t be denied, though it could be.  Every time I reach for my glass ... Read Article

SEE THIS CURRENT BLOG SERIES LANDING PAGE ON DERRIDA’S AND HEIDEGGER’S PHILOSOPHY OF DEATH: Jacques Derrida and Martin Heidegger on The Philosophy of Death Last time I noted the deep presence of Anxiety in Christianity that seems to inform Hei ... Read Article

SEE THIS CURRENT BLOG SERIES LANDING PAGE ON DERRIDA'S AND HEIDEGGER'S PHILOSOPHY OF DEATH: Jacques Derrida and Martin Heidegger on The Philosophy of Death Once that affect of conclusion (conviction or belief) is suspended, “it is surely possible,� ... Read Article

We had another great session of the Being and Time/Derrida discussion group today, especially thanks to our great discussion organizer.  What stood out to me: We asked what Heidegger is doing with the question of Being, since this isn’t immediately o ... Read Article

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbXOCwF_O4A&t ... Read Article

Excited to be attending the next meeting on Heidegger and Derrida tomorrow.  We will be looking at Derrida’s introduction to his translation of Husserl’s geometry book. That makes me think of when Heidegger says “in Leibniz’s sense, a rat ... Read Article

"Out of life's school of war—what does not kill me makes me stronger (Nietzsche’s1888 book Twilight of the Idols.)" There is an entirely new type of causality here whereby the effect correlates with the cause but is not the result of it.  We ... Read Article

I'm picking up from the same lecture course I was looking at from Derrida on concepts and metaphors, this time beginning a series on Life. If DNA is information like a text that is transmitted and deciphered without being "understood" as we typically t ... Read Article

δῆλον γὰρ ὡς ὑμεῖς μὲν ταῦτα [τί ποτε βούλεσθε σημαίνειν ὁπόταν ὂν φθέγγησθε] πάλαι γιγνώσκετε, ἡμεῖς δὲ πρὸ τοῦ μὲν ᾠόμεθα, νῦν δ' � ... Read Article

I previously covered the first 3 lectures of Derrida's Life/Death seminar focusing on what Derrida calls the Metaphoricity of the Metaphor and the Conceptuality of the Concept. That served as a good beginning and now I'd like to move on with an introduc ... Read Article

In relation to Leibniz's principle of ground/reason, Heidegger clarifies this issue in his 1957 book The Principle of Reason, "in Leibniz's sense, a ratio sufficiens, a sufficient reason, isn't at all a ground capable of supporting a being so that it does ... Read Article

Interpretations are not hermeneutics of reading but political interventions in the political rewriting of the text. This has always been the case, but especially so since what is called the end of philosophy, since the textual indicator named Hegel. It i ... Read Article

“The metaphoricity of metaphor and the conceptuality of the concept …” - Derrida, Jacques. Life Death (The Seminars of Jacques Derrida) (p. 68). INTRODUCTION “Metaphor” means transporting something from one domain to another, such as w ... Read Article

“a mortal can only start from here, from his mortality.  His possible belief in immortality, his irresistible interest in the beyond, in gods and spirits, what makes survival structure every instant in a kind of irreducible torsion, the torsion of ... Read Article

(Jacques Derrida, wiki) (Martin Heidegger, wiki) These are my notes for an upcoming study of Heidegger's Being and Time and Derrida's response. I focus on philosophy of death and Derrida's books The Gift of Death, On the Name, and Aporias. ... Read Article

Nietzsche argued that early Jews and Greeks were fundamentally "attached to life" and paid little attention to ideas of a personal afterlife or postmortem rewards and punishments. In his 1881 work Daybreak (specifically Section 72), Nietzsche contrasts th ... Read Article

Derrida notes no context, such as death, “can determine meaning to the point of exhaustiveness (Derrida, 9).”  Derrida connects this to the notion of aporia, a block in the path of appropriation that elicits wonder/thaumazein, something “fascinatin ... Read Article