Nathan Dickman

Rescuing people imprisoned in Plato's cave seems to form the vocation of philosophy. For many, those imprisoned might even be able to "lift themselves up by their bootstraps" and rescue themselves from the cave. I seek to share a class period where students work through a close reading of the cave passage in the Republic. I provide snapshots of thi...

While many people engage in interpretation, it is not clear what interpretation is. This critical primer examines the nature of interpretation, strategies within interpretation, and negotiations about the adequacy of an interpretation, with special attention paid to possible roles hermeneutics (the theory of interpretation) plays in the academic st...

This volume examines the nature of interpretation, strategies within interpretation, and negotiations about the adequacy of an interpretation, with special attention paid to possible roles interpretation plays in the academic study of religions. While many people engage in interpretation, it is not clear what interpretation is. Throughout the book,...

Buddhas, gods, prophets and oracles are often depicted as asking questions. But what are we to understand when Jesus asks “Who do you say that I am?”, or Mazu, the Classical Zen master asks, “Why do you seek outside?" Is their questioning a power or weakness? Is it something human beings are only capable of due to our finitude? Is there any kind of...

We examine dialectical tensions between "dialogue" and "narrative" as these discourses supplant one another as the fundamental discourse of intelligibility, through juxtaposing two interpretations of Genesis 38 rooted in changing interpretative paradigms. Is dialogue properly understood as a narrative genre, or is narrative the content about which...

An axiom of philosophical hermeneutics is that questioning has hermeneutic priority. Yet there are many different kinds of questions. Which sort has priority in understanding complete thoughts and for bringing about a fusion of horizons? Speech act theory is one resource for specifying which kind. I first develop the broad notion of questioning in...

In this paper, I bring together Jewish and Buddhist philosophical resources to develop a notion of radical responsibility that can confront a complicity within nursing and health care between empathy and (neo)liberal white supremacist hegemony. My inspiration comes from Angela Davis's call for building coalitions to advance struggles for peace and...

Our ability to think, argue and reason is determined by our ability to question. Questions are a vital component of critical thinking, yet we underestimate the role they play. Using Questions to Think puts questioning back in the spotlight. Naming the parts of questions at the same time as we name parts of thought, this one-of-a-kind introduction...

I develop Levinas’s analysis of “proximity” to explain how successful faceless class dialogues are possible despite physical social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. I first examine features of Levinas’s notion of proximity within his idiosyncratic approach to “ethics.” Second, I turn to Levinas’s examination of intentionality and questionin...

Sometimes critics are accomplices. Many critics misrecognize that we contribute to the very creation of the object about which we have objections! This is the case with many recent challenges to what has passed for “the philosophy of religion” over the last forty years or so. That is, critiques posed by scholars in the last twenty years create and...

The nursing community in the United States polarized in September 2020 between Dawn Wooten's whistleblowing about forced hysterectomies at an immigration center in Georgia and the American Nurses Association's refusal to endorse a presidential candidate despite the Trump administration's mounting failures to address the public health crisis posed b...

I examine a tension between temporal and spatial conceptualization of the genesis of the cosmos to show how chronological characterization of ‘beginnings’ occludes ontological interpretation of our existential orientations, to help my audience distinguish symbolic expressions of wonder that the cosmos exists from explanations for it. I bring togeth...

Introduction Agricultural workers perform intense labor outside in direct sunlight and in humid environmental conditions exposing them to a high risk of heat-related illness (HRI). To implement effective cooling interventions in occupational settings, it is important to consider workers’ perceptions. To date, an analysis of agricultural workers’ ex...

How can religiously affiliated institutions that promote liberal arts maintain commitment both to their affiliation and to the ideal of religious inclusivity? What principles of accreditation should be used by agencies—such as the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges—in assessing religiously affiliated yet inclusive institu...

This essay provides a close reading of Kierkegaard's later signed text, For Self-Examination. While many of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous texts often are selected for their philosophically explicit engagements with Hegelian philosophy, I use Hegel's dialectic of lordship and bondage to draw out how Kierkegaard circumvents it in this one. I first provi...

Background: The purpose of this systematic review is to examine cooling intervention research in outdoor occupations, evaluate the effectiveness of such interventions, and offer recommendations for future studies. This review focuses on outdoor occupational studies conducted at worksites or simulated occupational tasks in climatic chambers. Metho...

https://blog.apaonline.org/2020/07/22/syllabus-showcase-critical-thinking-nathan-eric-dickman/

https://blog.apaonline.org/2020/06/24/syllabus-showcase-phenomenology-and-existentialism-nathan-eric-dickman/

I want to know whether Chan masters and students depicted in classical Chan transmission literature can be interpreted as asking open (or what I will call “genuine”) questions. My task is significant because asking genuine questions appears to be a decisive factor in ascertaining whether these figures represent models for dialogue—the kind of dialo...

Posthumanist critics such as Braidotti—informed by the antihumanisms of Foucault, Irigaray, and Deleuze—seek to respond to advanced capitalism by promoting what they take to be a radical transformation of what it means to be “human,” a way of conceiving being human that is thoroughly and consistently post-anthropocentric. Braidotti calls out advanc...

For the past two decades, agricultural workers in regions of Central America have reported an epidemic of chronic kidney disease of undetermined etiology (CKDu) that is not associated with established risk factors of chronic kidney disease. Several hypotheses have emerged, but the etiology of CKDu remains elusive and controversial. The aim of this...

I appreciate J. Aaron Simmons and Bruce Ellis Benson’s (2013) effort to make recent French phenomenology accessible to a wider audience, and I respect their effort to defend ways in which figures covered (such as Jean-Luc Marion and Emmanuel Levinas) are indeed doing phenomenology. This defense seems motivated in the face of accusations or even dis...

It is by way of the call that one is enabled to wake up to responsibility. What is the illocutionary mood of the ‘call’ of conscience, though? Is this transcendental enabler of responsibility an imposing demand or an invitational question? Both Levinas and Heidegger emphasize the impositional character of the call(er) in conscience. The call seems...

For my invited contribution to this special issue of Religions on “Feminisms and the Study of ‘Religions,’” I focus on philosophy of religion and contestations over its relevance to the academic field of Religious Studies. I amplify some feminist philosophers’ voices—especially Pamela Sue Anderson—in corroboration with recent calls from Religious S...

Religion in Five Minutes provides an accessible and lively introduction to the questions about religion and religious behaviour that interest most of us, whether or not we personally identify with — or practice — a religion. Suitable for beginning students and the general reader, the book offers more than 60 brief essays on a wide range of fascinat...

Religion in Five Minutes provides an accessible and lively introduction to the questions about religion and religious behaviour that interest most of us, whether or not we personally identify with — or practice — a religion. Suitable for beginning students and the general reader, the book offers more than 60 brief essays on a wide range of fascinat...

Kevin Schilbrack’s Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto (2014) enters here to address two constellations of questions. One concerns what “religion” is and whether “religions” even exist. The other concerns whether philosophy ought to be among the various disciplines “raided” by religious studies. He seeks to convince readers that phil...

I examine challenges to images of a personal god definitive for normatively policed theism (often called “traditional theism”), questioning whether a subject can be conscious of a transcendent being. I examine the challenges to show that disappointment with such images calls for rethinking terms like “transcendence” in horizontal rather than vertic...

Many despair at trying to understand something’s meaning and express dissatisfaction with language wholesale. What if some things simply are not understandable? Thich Nhat Hanh coined interbeing to name the fundamental principle of interdependence defining Buddhist ontologies, and uses interbeing to dislodge despair resulting from rigid expectation...

In today’s increasingly shrinking world, we have a unique opportunity to respond to religious diversity. Yet the possibilities for response are as varied as the possibilities for religious life. Response is unavoidable. Even if I believe and practice secular humanism, this is but one among many available first order ideologies and institutions whic...

Religions answer existential questions. Yet questions recur in the direct discourse of central characters in religious literature. The Gospels depict Jesus asking hundreds of questions. The classical Chan master, Mazu, is depicted in the Mazu Yulu asking just as many questions. Despite attention given to nearly every aspect of religion, there is a...

Wolterstorff defends the claim not only that ‘God speaks’ through the Bible but also that the reader gains ever new insights upon subsequent readings of it. I qualify this project with the philosophical hermeneutics he rejects—namely that of Gadamer and Ricoeur. Wolterstorff thinks what he calls ‘authorial discourse interpretation’ provides warrant...

With almost a century of historical distance between Heidegger’s retrieval of the question of being and contemporary concern about the Other, we have accrued invaluable experiences for critical leverage about what it is to ask one another questions. I offer a sketch aimed at adapting Tillich’s theological system grounded in existential questioning...

A social history and linguistic analysis of the party game "Who am I?"

A social history and linguistics of the game Twenty Questions.

A brief social history of the see-saw.