I am reading and studying....
Since about 01 December 2004, I have been slowly reading _Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink: Beginnings and ends in phenomenology 1928-1938_, by Ronald Bruzina (a new Yale University Press release). For several months previously, I had not read any book because I could not find one I felt would engage me sufficiently and feel worth reading.
I readily admit that I cannot understand everything in this book -- since I have no community of fellow seekers with whom to try together to help each learn better than they can accomplish unaided.
But I feel this book is worth my time to read to the best of my ability, because it is about what I think is important philosophical work of the 20th century, which leads to a new and -- to me, at least, appealing -- way of understanding the individual in society, and, on the basis of that new understanding, restructuring society and the individual's life in it.
I have posted a text in which Husserl summarized his vision for a humanity renewed in philosophy: Philosophy and the Crisis of European Humanity.
Some 75 years have passed since Husserl's lecture, but we have not not even begun to achieve what he envisioned. Painfully, in the recent ever increasing shift in focus from persons finding meaning in their work, to finding the cheapest workers (etc.), we are hastening toward lowering, not higher life goals....
If one doubts that in the early 21st century we [at least in the U.S.A.] are losing ground, consider the following quote from President Richard Nixon's 06 September 1971 Labor Day address:
"In our quest for a better environment, we must always remember that the most important part of the quality of life is the quality of work, and the new need for job satisfaction is the key to the quality of work."
In the New Global Economy (offshoring work, the Walmartization of America, etc.), ever fewer can afford to be concerned about the quality of their work (or of their life) -- and even if they might be able to afford it today, threat of losing their job and not being able to find a new one with nearly as good pay and benefits does not provide fertile soil for such thoughts and aspirations to flourish.
I readily admit that I cannot understand everything in this book -- since I have no community of fellow seekers with whom to try together to help each learn better than they can accomplish unaided.
But I feel this book is worth my time to read to the best of my ability, because it is about what I think is important philosophical work of the 20th century, which leads to a new and -- to me, at least, appealing -- way of understanding the individual in society, and, on the basis of that new understanding, restructuring society and the individual's life in it.
I have posted a text in which Husserl summarized his vision for a humanity renewed in philosophy: Philosophy and the Crisis of European Humanity.
Some 75 years have passed since Husserl's lecture, but we have not not even begun to achieve what he envisioned. Painfully, in the recent ever increasing shift in focus from persons finding meaning in their work, to finding the cheapest workers (etc.), we are hastening toward lowering, not higher life goals....
If one doubts that in the early 21st century we [at least in the U.S.A.] are losing ground, consider the following quote from President Richard Nixon's 06 September 1971 Labor Day address:
"In our quest for a better environment, we must always remember that the most important part of the quality of life is the quality of work, and the new need for job satisfaction is the key to the quality of work."
In the New Global Economy (offshoring work, the Walmartization of America, etc.), ever fewer can afford to be concerned about the quality of their work (or of their life) -- and even if they might be able to afford it today, threat of losing their job and not being able to find a new one with nearly as good pay and benefits does not provide fertile soil for such thoughts and aspirations to flourish.
posted by bradmcc at 6:33 AM
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