I was in the middle of research for a little essay “Why you need to hate Andy Warhol” when I got distracted by traffic school in order to make a speeding ticket go away. So, instead you get highlights from the previous years o’ blogging.

Who is right?
A little conversation about language and epistemology:

Fellow #1: It seems to me that the end of epistemology is not a justification of how we know, but rather a description of how we know. Further, this is the end of all thought: Description, testing of the description with the thing known/experienced/apprehended, refining of the description, etc.

Fellow #2: Yes, but this seems to frame all things merely in the subjective. How could we then describe anything? The force of language is only as strong as those who command it. Further, one word means one thing to one man and to another man, something else. We can never be sure of communication.

[etc., etc.]

Obedience as a Virtue
More from the early Derridean phase on obedience:

The first and obvious problem to my mind, stems from the classic Catholic/Protestant debate of about faith and deeds (which is another name for obedience). Frankly, the debate is sophomoric (more on the”moric” side, if you catch my etymological drift) and complete unworthwhile to discuss. However, for the sake of the pedantic and the clear (both distinct and often opposites), I will say this much: One cannot divorce one from the other because one cannot divorce actions from convictions. To describe humanity that way is not simply unhuman but (non)human; it is conceptually violent which is to say false. All of this is to say that true obedience, whatever it may be, stems from faith.

My interests, if I must codify them.
The mission statement:

Broadly speaking, my fascination is with Western Thought. More particularly, I am interested in the historic perspectives on certitude, use of binaries (thesis/antithesis) for expressing truth, the language of rhetoric, the cultural and psychological principles which inform it and (the problem?) of meaning. I fail to distinguish between philosophy and theology, understanding the former (contemporary and ancient) as simply theologies (e.g., Aristotle’s Metaphysics) and, in some cases, even atheistic/nihilistic anti-theologies (e.g., Derrida’s Gift of Death) that are simple trying to find meaning in, or away from, the Infinite Other. (This is why I find myself in religion departments/seminaries rather than philosophy departments.)

All of this is simply for the sake of tracing a general pathology of Western Thought. After the pathology is traced, we can then begin to understand how to “deal” with history, specifically biblical orthodoxy, in light of contemporary developments so that the Gospel can be proclaimed in a vivid historically appropriate manner; namely, rooted in tradition but vivified in the contemporary cant. This can only be done effectively, I would argue, under the rubric of theology. A rubric which would bring together seemingly disparate ways of thinking into an epistemological and, finally, existential whole: a theology which informs rather than deforms the perceived world, an aesthetic–which is to say, unmechanistic, organic theology.

The Great Silence
All culminating in the now abandoned ranting of what may have something of an unstable philosophical period in my life (the post actually made my mom cry):

Language, in turn, dines with meaninglessness and vacuity, utterances are largely worthless, and substantial human connection is largely foiled. From here, nihilism is tenable–even preferable for its honesty, since the farce that we call the relationships with family and friends are just acts, the repetition of the same scenes (largely over/melo-dramatic), to distract us from our own lost sense of self and situation. Suicide is thus reasonable but not much different from living in the no-nothingness of life because death itself, like all things in life, lacks any real teeth: either way we are alone.

See also:
A discussion about a contemporary parable I wrote,
Language, The Heracletian Turn, and Commodification
Broad strokes concerning the questions I was asking the little section above,
The Book
And my commentary on the Emergent Church,
Foundations, Fear, and Sin - Part One and Part Two