Miscellaneous Updates

I figured that I haven't written anything for a while, so I might as well post a few things that have been going on in my life.

I really do need to get up a Hegel post on Self-Consciousness; I've read through the section a couple times, but I've been too lazy to summarize it. I'll probably stop the series after that, though. I'm focusing more on language work now, and Hegel isn't really a good back-burner project. Hopefully I'll be able to take a course on him sometimes in the next couple years.

Also, I went to a conference at Marquette entitled "Aquinas and the Arabs," which was pretty interesting. The "Arabs" in question are basically everyone at the time doing philosophy in the Arabic language, which was a fairly significant group comprising Jews, Christians, and Muslims of varying ethnicities. So, I got to hear interesting papers on a variety of topics, including a layout of Avicenna's project of metaphysics, some strategies for working with thinkers from non-Christian traditions who get put into Christianized frameworks (with a case study in Maimonides and his own views of analogical speech regarding God), and a second phase of Islamic philosophy that often gets ignored (more on this in moment). Plus, we had some Persian food to cap off the weekend; good stuff.

The story regarding Islamic philosophy often goes as follows: they had some good stuff, as seen in people like Avicenna and Averroes (although this tended to be overly rationalistic and therefore arid), but then that al-Ghazali guy came along with his "Incoherence of the Philosophers" and put a stop to that. Afterward, with philosophy pushed aside, Muslims spent more time in irrational mysticism. The paper, given by David Burrell, pointed out that al-Ghazali was an important figure, but in ushering in a secondary phase of Islamic philosophy which has not received due attention in the West. al-Ghazali's positive contributions are generally overlooked; he was interested in rationally understanding his faith, but also thought that there was a dimension transcending what can be known rationally. Many subsequent movements in Islamic thought followed suit, as perhaps philosophical theologies, are philosophical mysticisms. Suhrawardi is one example, which his Philosophy of Illumination (both based on mystical experience, and on arguments against the Avicennian peripatetics on their own ground). Ibn Arabi is another mystical thinker concerned with understanding that thought rationally insofar as possible. Finally, the Persian philosopher Mulla Sadra combined the Avicennian philosophy with the thought of Suhrawardi and Ibn Arabi.

In other news, our pet gerbil Hime has died not too long ago; she had been sickly and in general old-gerbilish for a while, but holding on tenaciously.

On the opposite end of the news spectrum, Joy is now officially a C.P.A. Yay her!