Pithy quotes from our current reading which give us pause to reflect

I’m not sure what my feeling is in reading this, which then reminds me of Sam Keen who in his thirties could recount the history of 18th and 19th century philosophy with ease, but could not tell whether he was angry, ashamed, or confused inside.

It was in a class on phenomenology and the professor came from a line of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas. Levinas was his darling, and I still regret not taking the class he taught specifically about him. But it was in our third class together, and I’m working through Heidegger for the first time and feeling absolutely alone. In my cries to Jesus, he came to me and I felt his presence.

So when an opportunity came later to read papers in class, I wrote about my reading of Heidegger and my experience and then read it. This seasoned seventy year old professor who prided himself on the coolness of not getting emotionally entangled in philosophy… lost his nerve. “Don’t make this about you!”

There are other people and then there is Another.

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