I’m starting to think that my metaphilosophical commitments are very much settled, even though they are the thing that is most disturbing to non-philosophers.
First, I think the variety of human beings on this planet is the starting point for why the integrity of human experience is rich, beautiful, and so completely baffling. That’s why I philosophize.
Second (and somewhat related to the first) is that multiplicity and becoming are the cause for such variety in both our experience and the cosmos that Aristotle’s proclamation about thaumazein (the Greek word for “wonder”) is the starting place of philosophy; it just make sense, but it’s wondering about the rampant multiplicity that stirs me to reflect.
Third, any political or moral philosophy that doesn’t start with the respect of persons is one that easily cannot see why the first point about the integrity of human experience and pluralism are important, and thus the lack of honoring human difference strikes me as the wrong way to proceed in value theory at all.
Fourth, because there are so many that do not honor difference, philosophy is for the liberation of human beings; it should achieve the widest possible understanding of human beings drawn from natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. Philosophy should be generating insight to free both mindsets and practices that transgress the absolute principle of respect and dignity of persons. This fourth reason is the why of public philosophy, too.
Fifth, we experience relations, and it is the flux of relations, their relata, and the personal act centers of embodied human beings that are at the heart of any attempt to understand reality metaphysically. I’m currently in this fifth commitment a lot; I am, as it were, engaging a lot of themes in some primary figures that revolve around phenomenology and pragmatism in philosophy of religion.
The Horizon and The Fringe 