An Eclectic Humanist

Early Modern Feminism 2: Li Zhi

This episode concludes the two-part series on Early Modern Feminism by skipping across the Eurasian landmass to look at a precise contemporary of Jane Anger, the Elizabethan thinker and writer we looked at last week. Li Zhi was a cantankerous thinker and writer who suffered neither fools nor dogma gladly, and who was not afraid to take on some of the most deeply held prejudices of his society. He was deeply studied in the so-called “three schools” of Chinese culture—Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism—and used this knowledge to craft an argument for the equality of women and men that, though it contradicted the tradition of the very conservative society in which he lived, remained true to the logic of its guiding worldviews. He offers a critique of patriarchal institutions, explores the recognition of human equality in the Confucian historical cannon, and deconstructs gendered social distinctions through the lens of Chan/Zen Buddhism. For his trouble, he died in custody but served as an inspiration for subsequent generations. One of my greatest intellectual and ethical heroes: I hope you enjoy his story.

Early Modern Feminism 1: Jane Anger

This episode and the next one lean hard into the “eclectic” side of “Eclectic Humanist.” Following up on the series on Roe v. Wade, I'd like to turn the clock back a few hundred years and look at a couple of examples of Early Modern feminism. There is, after all, an ongoing and unabashed effort from the religious right to turn the clock pretty far back, so it may be useful in the context of women's rights to take a glimpse into the world before the advances made by four centuries of feminist writing and activism . This episode takes us to Elizabethan England. We start with a discussion of women's status in the society of the day, including justifications for the subjugation of women in the words of the men who made them, then look at some specific legal restrictions to which women were subject. The main focus, though, is the writing of the little-known Jane Anger, to my mind the first English feminist. While her work is short, it is rich in terms of both arguments and rhetoric, preempting in some ways the arguments made some 200 years later by Mary Wollstonecraft. What I look at in particular here is her critique of the ways in which theological arguments are used to support misogynist positions, and her rejection not just of the arguments, but of the types of argument, that separate medieval from modern thought.

Roe v. Wade 3: My Daughter’s Enemy

This episode wraps up, for now, the series I've been doing on the overturning of Roe v. Wade. It discusses the marriage of White Evangelical Christianity with the anti-choice cause in the wake of that 1973 decision, and begins to address the influence of the Christian nationalist ideology known as Dominion Theology on American politics generally and the Republican Party and White Evangelical Christianity specifically. From here, we jump into some statistics, specifically statistics on the ongoing decline of religious affiliation in the US, and the pressure that the projected continuation of this decline puts on today's aspiring theocrats to establish their new Promised Land before the demographic window closes on them for good. I try, as well, to offer a few thoughts on the role the overturning of Roe v Wade might play in the establishing of the American theocracy that we are now watching unfold, and reversing the decades-long trend of emptying pews. The episode wraps with a brief discussion of my own reasons for the position I've taken on this issue—really, kind of a rant. I hope you find it interesting and useful.

Roe v. Wade 2: ”Water of Bitterness”

This episode is the first of three devoted to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. In this installment, I address questions of bodily sovereignty, and look into statistics relevant to abortion ranging from the 1930s to the present. The episode paints a picture of what the pre-Roe US looked like in terms of abortion access and maternal mortality, thus giving a clear indication of the world to which anti-choice activists and judges are trying to return. I also address the effectiveness, or rather the ineffectiveness, of abortion bans in reducing incidence, as opposed to more legitimate approaches such as education, contraception, and access to health care, and begin digging into the deep intellectual dishonesty of anti-choice rhetoric—a theme to be pursued in subsequent episodes.

Roe v. Wade 1: View from a Vacant Lot

This episode is the first of three devoted to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. In this installment, I address questions of bodily sovereignty, and look into statistics relevant to abortion ranging from the 1930s to the present. The episode paints a picture of what the pre-Roe US looked like in terms of abortion access and maternal mortality, thus giving a clear indication of the world to which anti-choice activists and judges are trying to return. I also address the effectiveness, or rather the ineffectiveness, of abortion bans in reducing incidence, as opposed to more legitimate approaches such as education, contraception, and access to health care, and begin digging into the deep intellectual dishonesty of anti-choice rhetoric—a theme to be pursued in subsequent episodes.

A Re-Introduction

This episode re-introduces a project that I had effectively abandoned about a year ago. As such, I'm treating it as a new beginning and laying out my reasons for starting again, most importantly the threat to humanism, and human well-being, currently posed by the religious right. This decision is a direct response to the US Supreme Court's move to usurp the bodily sovereignty of anyone who happens to have a uterus—a legal theft of agency that will almost certainly continue on matters of same-sex marriage, trans rights, and even contraception, and that absolutely must be opposed. Accordingly, I also give some indication of how I might like to pursue things moving forward. In short, this brief episode is a way of getting to know each other, or in some cases maybe getting to know each other again. The actual content begins next episode, and I hope you will check it out.

Crossed Trails and What Hobbes Got Wrong

This episode, continuing last week's theme of COVID-19, human nature, and social responsibility, begins with a random encounter in the woods. It then wanders through some speculation on Hobbesian and Confucian state-of-nature arguments, a brief digression into primatology, and some thoughts on North America's ongoing epidemic of selfishness and sociopathy that our fractured responses to the coronavirus, particularly among the “muh freedum” crowd in their active undermining of adequate public health measures, has brought to the surface. Of course, as merely pointing out a shortcoming is not particularly useful, I also suggest a possible remedy to this selfishness epidemic, arising from a more nuanced understanding of human nature than is common among both anti-maskers and the far political right. It would appear that, this time around, I felt like highlighting the “eclectic” facet of the “Eclectic Humanist.” Hope you enjoy it, or at least that you don't get whiplash.

What Would Mencius Do: A Confucian Response to COVID 19

This episode kicks off a new sequence, or maybe a couple of new sequences. I've been wanting to explore both Buddhism and the figure of the cyborg since first starting this little project. As it turns out, by starting with Buddhism, I can do both at the same time as much of my take on both cyborgs and post-humanism generally is rooted in that and other non-Western schools of thought. So what I think I'm going to do is devote a few episodes to the Diamond Sutra, a short and quite important Buddhist text, both for its own sake and to lay the foundation for a broader exploration. It presents a vision of human nature that, I think, poses serious challenges to a number of assumptions that Western worldviews tend to take for granted. After this sequence, I may look at one or two other worldviews that I haven't addressed yet, and then segue into the post-human themes I also want to roll around in.
As for the current installment, it sketches out some of the basics of Buddhism generally and Mahayana Buddhism specifically, so that the Diamond Sutra itself will make more sense when we dive into it next week. I hope you find it interesting, whether you are here strictly for the immediate subject matter or also for the longer narrative.

Diamond Sutra: A Brief Sketch of Mahayana Buddhism

This episode kicks off a new sequence, or maybe a couple of new sequences. I've been wanting to explore both Buddhism and the figure of the cyborg since first starting this little project. As it turns out, by starting with Buddhism, I can do both at the same time as much of my take on both cyborgs and post-humanism generally is rooted in that and other non-Western schools of thought. So what I think I'm going to do is devote a few episodes to the Diamond Sutra, a short and quite important Buddhist text, both for its own sake and to lay the foundation for a broader exploration. It presents a vision of human nature that, I think, poses serious challenges to a number of assumptions that Western worldviews tend to take for granted. After this sequence, I may look at one or two other worldviews that I haven't addressed yet, and then segue into the post-human themes I also want to roll around in.
As for the current installment, it sketches out some of the basics of Buddhism generally and Mahayana Buddhism specifically, so that the Diamond Sutra itself will make more sense when we dive into it next week. I hope you find it interesting, whether you are here strictly for the immediate subject matter or also for the longer narrative.

Lucretius Book 6: Concluding with a Plague

This episode concludes our little traipse through Lucretius's On the Nature of Things. In Book 6, Lucretius implicitly addresses the sufficiency of a naturalistic worldview in the making of great art, then brings us face to face with the concrete reality of dying. In describing a historical plague in Athens, he describes in painful detail the double agony of illness and fear to which those living in terror of postmortem judgment are often subject. In doing so, he addresses the ethical question, current in many modern societies, of prolonging a life beyond the point where the only reasonable prospect is continued suffering. In short, he seems to be laying the groundwork for what we now call “death with dignity.” But why? Why conclude a poem of consolation with a grueling description of physical and psychological suffering? Well, I won't offer a definitive answer, but it seems to me that, in addressing the origins of the world, of life, of humanity, and of society, it would then have been dishonest to have left out questions of mortality. An account of life that leaves out an account of death would necessarily be incomplete, as would such an account that shied away from the pain of dying. Looked at this way Lucretius seems to be offering his naturalistic perspective as an antidote to the real suffering caused by belief in the supernatural. We may not be able to alleviate the suffering of the body in the days leading up to death, but we can, it seems, both alleviate our mental suffering regarding our postmortem trajectory, and also have grounds for not prolonging life beyond the point where the only possible outcome is continued agony.