Felix Culpa

No Exit

No problem.

Leonard Cohen Interview - Part 2 of 3

Devotion

Elijah Benamozegh

Kabbalah in the Age of Reason.

The History of Western Metaphysics

Adolf Grunbaum

Just over a year ago today (November 15, 2018), Adolf Grunbaum passed into the great beyond at the age of 95. I took only one course with Professor Grunbaum as an undergraduate (an Honors Seminar in Religion and Science), but the impact of that single course has remained with me (and will continue to reverberate) for the rest of my life. Grunbaum had no patience with lazy-minded thinking--religious or otherwise. He taught me to read Freud with an eye both critical and appreciative and he introduced me to the work of Erich Fromm. He also convinced me to expand my musical horizons (on his recommendation, I began to listen to Maria Callas). And so, Professor Grunbaum, this song's for you.

Fromm Redux

When I was an undergrad, Adolf Grunbaum introduced me to the writings of Erich Fromm (specifically, his book Psychoanalysis and Religion). At the time I first read it (1980 or '81) I remember being somewhat nonplussed by Fromm’s suggestion that psychoanalysis could fill the gap left in people’s lives by the loss of religion. Yes, I would agree that psychoanalysis should probably be provided to the masses (now more than ever), but what probably seemed plausible back in the late 1940s (when he wrote that book) was, more than thirty years later, no longer even thinkable. So I filed his project under “Quixotic” and left it at that for forty years.

I recently re-read the book, however, and was surprised to discover how much more there is to it than his promotion of a psychoanalytic alternative to traditional religion, and even more surprised to discover how much of his essentially humanistic approach to religion I had absorbed and, really, made my own. Perhaps my selective memory of the book was a symptom of influence anxiety...

At any rate, I would suggest that an even more urgent read today is Fromm's 1966 book, You Shall Be As Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and its Tradition. For this book, Fromm reached back into his Jewish upbringing and education and wrote a truly powerful interpretation of the Hebrew Bible as the well-spring of the best of what we may call the “Abrahamic tradition.” I will go so far as to say that if Christians, Jews, and Muslims could step outside of the particularities of their traditions and give this book a fair reading on its merits, it could potentially lay the foundation for an “Abrahamism” that would make the phrase “Abrahamic tradition” more than the polite “interfaith” lip service that it has become.

Of course, I recognize that is a proposition beyond the capacity of most Christians, Jews, and Muslims to entertain. But at least it doesn’t face anyone with the prospect of having to spill their guts once a week at the rate of $ 150 for 45 minutes.

Mihrab

Bob Dylan Tales of Yankee Power / Señor 1978

Sepideh Raissadat: "Ze Farvardin"

Hegel

Not the Hegel of the metaphysical system, but the Hegel of gem-like aphorisms and erudite asides, is the Hegel of genius. Like youth itself, however, he is wasted on the young. Too many of those who read him in their youth are swept up in the romance of his epic philosophical imagination and fail to distinguish logos from mythos. Hegel himself suffered from this form of myopia when it came to his own thinking, but he can be forgiven his lack of objectivity. His disciples, on the other hand, should have exercised greater restraint.

Leonard Cohen - The Goal (Official Video)

This Inward Center...

The religion, the ethics of a restricted life, the life of a shepherd or of a peasant has infinite value in its concentrated intensity and in its limitation to a few and very simple aspects of life. It has the same value as the religiosity and the ethics of someone of highly developed knowledge and of an existence rich in extent and activity. This inward center, this simple sphere of the right of subjective freedom--the source of will, decision and action, the abstract content of his conscience, that wherein guilt and value of the individual, his everlasting court, are comprised--remains untouched by the loud noise of world history.

~ Hegel, The Philosophy of History, tr. C. J. and P. W. Friedrich

Light

Photo credit: Yusuf Kartal

Truth

"...truth is a Bacchantic ecstasy wherein every member is drunk."

~ Hegel

Robert Plant - Carry Fire (Live)

Heroes Of Marxist Humanism

In brief...

God - John Lennon ( Remastered 2007 ) HD

Robbie Robertson - Out Of The Blue