I was thirteen when I found myself asking: How do I know that God exists? How do I know that there is anything real beyond my mental thoughts of it? I had no proof, of God or of reality. I knew of no one I could turn to even to voice the questions.
Eventually, I figured out that the questions weren’t silly; they were philosophical. Thoughtful responses to them had shaped whole cultural epochs across the disciplines. I fell in love with this idea! And the day I learned that one could actually study philosophy in college, it took me twelve hours to redirect my life to do so. Philosophy seemed to me the most important thing to seek to understand. And since philosophy shapes all other disciplines, studying it promised to integrate them all meaningfully.
My quest for the real led through a BA, MA and PhD, and into Academia. But I had to work out my own every-day responses to my early questions. This is what I am doing in my books. For I also found out eventually two other things. First, everybody is philosophical. To be human is to be philosophical. Second, people living in the Modern Age in the cultural West don’t even realize they are philosophical, and they don’t think philosophy matters. Yet they all struggle with philosophical issues.
I found out that our Modern Age itself touts an antiphilosophical philosophy. It robs us of our philosophical birthright. It both spawns and disavows doubts about knowing and the real. It implicitly programs us with a defective approach to knowing which actually obstructs our work, damaging ourselves and the world. And modernity implicitly disavows and distrusts the real.
All of us share the questions and sense the philosophical crisis of the Modern Age. So I am a professional philosopher working beyond the ivory tower with people in the streets—where philosophizing ought to happen, to address people’s heartfelt but often thwarted longing for the real. I want to share with others what I needed desperately but took decades to find.
I have found a deeply healing, integrative, life-reorienting approach to our core philosophical questions about knowing and the real. It offers a profound critique of the implicit philosophy that is the Modern Age. And since our philosophical approach is foundational to everything else we do, this philosophical approach has been proven to positively and concretely impact every other venture we undertake.
I’d like the opportunity to share it with you and your team. In my books you can get the full picture of the way I see knowing and reality—and the way I think you do and should too. And then I love to “follow my books,” meeting and talking further with people who have read them, want to understand more fully, and want to share this vision with others. I offer talks, lectures, workshops, and courses. Of these, perhaps the workshops are the best!
Eventually, I figured out that the questions weren’t silly; they were philosophical. Thoughtful responses to them had shaped whole cultural epochs across the disciplines. I fell in love with this idea! And the day I learned that one could actually study philosophy in college, it took me twelve hours to redirect my life to do so. Philosophy seemed to me the most important thing to seek to understand. And since philosophy shapes all other disciplines, studying it promised to integrate them all meaningfully.
My quest for the real led through a BA, MA and PhD, and into Academia. But I had to work out my own every-day responses to my early questions. This is what I am doing in my books. For I also found out eventually two other things. First, everybody is philosophical. To be human is to be philosophical. Second, people living in the Modern Age in the cultural West don’t even realize they are philosophical, and they don’t think philosophy matters. Yet they all struggle with philosophical issues.
I found out that our Modern Age itself touts an antiphilosophical philosophy. It robs us of our philosophical birthright. It both spawns and disavows doubts about knowing and the real. It implicitly programs us with a defective approach to knowing which actually obstructs our work, damaging ourselves and the world. And modernity implicitly disavows and distrusts the real.
All of us share the questions and sense the philosophical crisis of the Modern Age. So I am a professional philosopher working beyond the ivory tower with people in the streets—where philosophizing ought to happen, to address people’s heartfelt but often thwarted longing for the real. I want to share with others what I needed desperately but took decades to find.
I have found a deeply healing, integrative, life-reorienting approach to our core philosophical questions about knowing and the real. It offers a profound critique of the implicit philosophy that is the Modern Age. And since our philosophical approach is foundational to everything else we do, this philosophical approach has been proven to positively and concretely impact every other venture we undertake.
I’d like the opportunity to share it with you and your team. In my books you can get the full picture of the way I see knowing and reality—and the way I think you do and should too. And then I love to “follow my books,” meeting and talking further with people who have read them, want to understand more fully, and want to share this vision with others. I offer talks, lectures, workshops, and courses. Of these, perhaps the workshops are the best!