Jewish Thinkers of Otherness ⟩ The Next Episode
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Our lovely family gatherings with Thelma have now concluded. The prospect of leaving her warm yellow room behind fills me with dread; I suspect many of you feel the same way. We are fledgling birds leaving the nest—and, as such birds do, flailing not only outward but downward.
What better way to steel ourselves for the coming year’s horrors than by increasing our powers of confrontation? Trump and his self-benefiting cronies have turned otherizing schadenfreude into the feel-good drug of the decade. What philosophical topic could possibly help us train as warriors for the light side of the Force in such a crucial, absurdly evil-celebrating time?
I sought counsel from my friends Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Steven Taubeneck, and they offered three stark injunctions:
- Don’t slack off now. Stay strong.
- Don’t escape into opioid entertainments. If you want to recharge, do it by immersing yourself in the pain of rigor and clarity about ultimate concerns. Feel deeply—but keep the critical-intelligence lights on.
- Where possible, shift from Thelma’s panoramic history of Western philosophy to a cohort of Otherness Specialists—researchers who placed otherness at the center of their philosophical work.
Hearing these admonitions set the standard alchemical Great Work process in motion. Recognizing the immensity of the task induced the Nigredo. Digesting it and discovering the common hub brought on the Albedo. Now, as I write, I find myself entering Citrinitas.
In the coming weeks, if fortune smiles, I will reach the Rubedo—together with all of you.
Behold our interim four-part miniseries:
Jewish Thinkers of Otherness: Buber – Arendt – Levinas – Derrida
This series will examine four distinct ways whereby the Other becomes a decisive philosophical event: as presence, as plurality, as ethical asymmetry, and as structural difference.
Each session focuses on one thinker and one conceptual pathway, presented by a brave member of our community—currently experiencing performance anxiety about presenting to a group of critical Others. But they have no need to worry, because Jedi Master Professor Steven Taubeneck will be on hand to answer the hard hard questions and prevent us from cheating, lying, fabricating, speculating, and bluffing.
This generic placeholder description will be updated once our courageous presenters send in their outlines. For now, mark your calendars, join the discussion, and prepare for a series that explores how twentieth-century thought reconceived relation, responsibility, and alterity at the deepest and most disquieting levels.
METHOD
TBA
Summaries, notes, event chatlogs, episode transcripts, timelines, tables, observations, and downloadable PDFs of the episodes we cover can be found here:
ABOUT PROFESSOR TAUBENECK
Professor Taubeneck is professor of German and Philosophy at UBC, first translator of Hegel’s Encyclopedia into English, and SADHO CΦO. Most impressively, he has also been wrestling with the core texts of 20-cent. phenomenology and existentialism for over 30 years, and has worked and collaborated with Gadamer, Derrida, and Rorty.
View all of our coming episodes here.