Re: [xmca] Re: Obama's Learn Act

[Larry Purss <lpurss@shaw.ca>]

Gregory
 
I wanted to reply to your wish to open dialogue with positions different from our own and be respectful of different positions.
I want to add some possible qualifications to your position which I generally support.
When we talk about taking an ethical and moral stance in the world that we take as a fallible position which we are ready to revise, we can enter into dialogue or literate discourses with other traditions which are at least respectful of one's position.  For me this means trying to understand theological positions such as Christian, Moslem, Jewish, and Buddhist "language games" with their traditional "language games" which incorporate a set of rules (Wittgenstein) but embrace the "mystery" and the sacredness and ultimate unknowability and fallibility of one's tradition.  
>From this position my interest in seeing existence as relationally grounded can be articulated within the other theological and philosophical discourses and there is a possibility of "opening up spaces" (or building bridges)
to alternative literary discourses.  
 
Your example of having respectful dialogues with positions such as Chuck Norris articulates is more difficult for me to envision.  Where does respect end and conflict begin?  Traditions are also contested ground.  When the "other" refuses to acknowledge your position as having a validity claim then conflict is inevitable.
Too much respect and situations such as in Haiti continue to exist and go unchallenged in our private worlds.  
The question is how do we become response-able.  My hope (maybe too idealistic) is every action leads to a reaction (which sometimes is mediated) and therefore the crisis we are currently living through (with the planet in the balance)
may become so untenable that at a systems level there may be change to a relational world view which theology, philosophy, and science can all embrace.
 
Gregory, your ethical stance to reach out and open spaces for dialogue is one I agree with.  However, using the language of artifacts and architecture, and intermediate community (meso level) if there is to be sustained dialogue we need to construct architectural places where the dialogue can be embodied and located.  This is why I am interested in the history of LCHC as one of those places and its philosophical parentage as embodying a tradition and literary discourse that places a community of inquiry at the center of its ethical position. (but that's another thread)
 
Larry 
 
 


----- Original Message -----
From: Gregory Allan Thompson <gathomps@uchicago.edu>
Date: Wednesday, December 23, 2009 12:38 pm
Subject: [xmca] Re: Obama's Learn Act
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu

> 
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