David Kolb

What does it mean to be a modern American today? These slides summarize the discussion from five lectures delivered in winter 2019 at the University of Oregon's Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. The lectures themselves are available on YouTube Just how different is American from other cultural identities? We have thought of ourselves as the specially modern nation, spreading the revolutionary gospel of freedom from traditional restrictions. Some condemn this American exceptionalism, while others celebrate it. Don't take sides too quickly, there are deep issues here. -- The first lecture poses the question whether American identity is a rigid given set of traditional substantive values, or a free floating modern identity with at most a set of formal procedural values. -- The second and third lectures dismantle these options, arguing that any substantive identity must include areas of inner freedom and mobility, and any formal procedural identity needs substantive style and content in order to exist at all. Personal and social identities are two leveled, with given values and projects plus inner self-reflection and space for revision. -- The fourth lecture argues that what makes American identity special is neither its substantive values nor its modern formalism, which are shared with other modern nations, but rather the particular slant of its second level attitudes and practices towards first level substance. -- The fifth lecture asks what America can learn and teach in an increasingly multicultural world.

These lectures of Heidegger on Hegel’s Phenomenology were given in the winter semester 1930–1931 in Freiburg. This was only a few years after the publication of Being and Time and Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics; much of the language harks back to those works. The lectures predate by twelve years the essay “Hegel’s Concept of Experience” and by about twenty-seven years the discussions of Hegel in Identity and Difference and “Hegel and the Greeks.” As is the case with Heidegger’s course lectures, these are easier reading than the essays and books. It would be unfortunate, however, if their greater length and comparative clarity were to give them a special prominence among Heidegger’s views on Hegel, since the later treatments are more sophisticated.

This essay discusses the situation of philosophy today in an era of mixed modern, postmodern, and traditional values and social patterns. It argues, with reference to postmodern architecture and to the German philosophers Hegel and Heidegger, that we should reject polarizing conceptual dualities, and that we need to seek out new kinds of less centered and less hierarchical unities that take advantage of the internal tensions and spacings within intellectual and cultural formations. It concludes with a discussion of the promises and problems of dialogue between Eastern and Western philosophies in today’s world.

When I was first studying Hegel I encountered quite divergent readings of his views on religion. The teacher who first presented Hegel to me was a Jesuit, Quentin Lauer at Fordham University, who read Hegel as a Christian theologian providing a better metaphysical system for understanding the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation. When I studied at Yale, Kenley Dove read Hegel as the first thoroughly atheistic philosopher, who presented the conditions of thought without reference to any foundational absolute being. Meanwhile, also at Yale, John Findlay read us a deeply Neo-Platonic Hegel who taught about absolute forms held in a cosmic mind. In giving my own reading I want to talk about the ways Hegel redefines both metaphysics and religion. I would like to approach these issues by way of the medieval controversy over double truth, which was a previous conflict between religion and science.

Lack of information is hardly our problem. Information comes at us in waves, sloshing out of the magazine rack, lapping at our computer monitors. It repeats and repeats on all-day news shows. It comes neatly packaged as sound bites, or little nuggets ready for trivia games. We have plenty of information, but it is not often the information we need. Even if it is, we need to learn how to deal with it. It is not just the amount, but the speed. Too much happens everywhere that may be important anywhere. Too much comes for us to think it over.