Appartement: A New Word For Our Times

appartement.
noun: a real or imagined psychological discomfort caused by the expectation or anticipation of future political or socio-political events.  The term originated with specific reference to November 2010 elections but may also relate to future events (see further below under Extended Meanings).

Etymology
Appartement derives from the French word for apartment, and is preferably given a French pronunciation. The cognate English word apartment conveys the notion of "a set of private rooms in a building entirely of these".  The new word is derived from an older notion of separateness which ultimately manifests as solitary living. A paradox of appartement philosophy is an anti-communal spirit (preferring to abide alone) and this feature distinguishes adherents of appartement philosophy from earlier anti-establishment movements, for example, the hippies.

Extended Meanings
(1) Appartement philosophy began in the early 21st century as an earnest rebellion against what adherents viewed as increasingly materialist, amoral trends within United States social culture. Initially identified with a politically left-leaning philosophy, the appartement movement championed greener living, despite the need for more and more additional single person dwellings.  Appartement philosophy championed cultural diversity, indeed to the point of regarding everything and everybody as equal (but separate).  Adherents of appartement, notably white, young and affluent, actively despised cohabitation with opposite and even same sexed partners, especially if children instead of pets were involved, preferring the solitary "apart" lifestyle.

(2)  Appartement describes the existential angst of living alone in a big city surrounded by relative well being, yet having the feeling that that relative well being may unexpectedly vanish.  As a societal phenomenon, appartement sentiment first emerged as embodying independence and upward financial mobility, particularly amongst youths reaching or exceeding college age.  Appartement philosophy was best exemplified in the halcyon days of condominium speculation in the first decade of the 21st century.

(3) Appartement sentiment describes the feeling of willful detachment that adherents may feel when contemplating great swaths of fly-over-country where people live in actual family-based units which they consider archaic.

After the November 2010 elections, fictional and real portrayals in novels, films, and television began depicting appartement adherents with growing derision and scorn.  Adherents of appartement began to be seen as an isolated phenomenon.  Paradoxically, as world events incurred to unify the United States, the appartement movement smoothly blended into the fabric of greater American society.

[Added: appartement is exacerbated by modern social networking. To some degree, people "network" at the expense of forming older, more traditional social networks such as neighborhoods]
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I wrote that years ago on my blog here. You can check out the back and forth that blake I had at the time. Anyone remember blake?  I think I still have the power to summon him, but I won't at this time.

I dug this out for review because of very recent "social distancing" which certain universities are pushing. I'm predicting that "social distancing" will fail for very human reasons -- people are not geared to handle the existential angst of being alone. They will "safe cluster" instead.

The Most Savage Philosopher Of All Time

Link

“What do I love when I love my God?”

The last two interview questions posed to John D. Caputo, a professor of religion and humanities at Syracuse University. The interview was conducted via e-mail, by Gary Gutting, a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and published by the New York Times.

G.G.: "If Derrida doubts or denies that there’s someone who guarantees such things, isn’t it only honest to say that he is an agnostic or an atheist? For most people, God is precisely the one who guarantees that the things we most fear won’t happen. You’ve mentioned Derrida’s interest in Augustine. Wouldn’t Augustine — and virtually all the Christian tradition — denounce any suggestion that God’s promises might not be utterly reliable?"

J.C.: "Maybe it disturbs what “most people” think religion is — assuming they are thinking about it — but maybe a lot of these people wake up in the middle of the night feeling the same disturbance, disturbed by a more religionless religion going on in the religion meant to give them comfort. Even for people who are content with the contents of the traditions they inherit, deconstruction is a life-giving force, forcing them to reinvent what has been inherited and to give it a future. But religion for Derrida is not a way to link up with saving supernatural powers; it is a mode of being-in-the-world, of being faithful to the promise of the world."

"The comparison with Augustine is telling. Unlike Augustine, he does not think a thing has to last forever to be worthy of our unconditional love. Still, he says he has been asking himself all his life Augustine’s question, “What do I love when I love my God?” But where Augustine thinks that there is a supernaturally revealed answer to this question, Derrida does not. He describes himself as a man of prayer, but where Augustine thinks he knows to whom he is praying, Derrida does not. When I asked him this question once he responded, “If I knew that, I would know everything” — he would be omniscient, God!"

"This not-knowing does not defeat his religion or his prayer. It is constitutive of them, constituting a faith that cannot be kept safe from doubt, a hope that cannot be kept safe from despair. We live in the distance between these pairs."

G.G.: "But if deconstruction leads us to give up Augustine’s way of thinking about God and even his belief in revealed truth, shouldn’t we admit that it has seriously watered down the content of Christianity, reduced the distance between it and agnosticism or atheism? Faith that is not confident and hope that is not sure are not what the martyrs died for."

J.C.: "In this view, what martyrs die for is an underlying faith, which is why, by an accident of birth or a conversion, they could have been martyrs for the other side. Mother Teresa expressed some doubts about her beliefs, but not about an underlying faith in her work. Deconstruction is a plea to rethink what we mean by religion and to locate a more unnerving religion going on in our more comforting religion."

"Deconstruction is faith and hope. In what? In the promises that are harbored in inherited names like “justice” and “democracy” — or “God.” Human history is full of such names and they all have their martyrs. That is why the difference between Derrida and Augustine cannot be squashed into the distinction between “theism” and “atheism” or — deciding to call it a draw — “agnosticism.” It operates on a fundamentally different level. Deconstruction dares to think “religion” in a new way, in what Derrida calls a “new Enlightenment,” daring to rethink what the Enlightenment boxed off as “faith” and “reason.”"

"But deconstruction is not destruction. After all, the bottom line of deconstruction, “yes, come,” is pretty much the last line of the New Testament: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”"

8 Great Philosophical Questions (Which The Author Believes) We'll Never Solve

"Never" is a long, long time on which to place a bet that something will not happen.  Never presupposes time without end; an infinitely long time.  The nature of philosophy is work through difficult questions and cause them to be solved.  That will most certainly happen within the time assigned to "never." 

Or will it?

The 8 questions are described in this article.   What do you believe, and based on what philosophical proof?  Several of the questions, in my opinion have been (or can be) answered.

Question  4, for example: Does God exist?  Thomas Aquinas developed a philosophical way for demonstrating God's existence in  Summa Theologiae.  Aquinas begins with the idea that every effect requires a cause, and that nothing that exists in the physical world is the cause of its own existence.  This is known as the principle of sufficient reason.

When we encounter a chair, for example, we know perfectly well that it did not come into existence spontaneously.  It owes its existence to something else: a builder and previously existing raw materials.  An existing thing Z owes its existence to cause Y, but Y itself, not being self-existing, is also in need of a cause.  Y owes existence to cause X.  But now X must be accounted for, and X owes its existence to cause W.

We are faced with the following problem: Every cause of a given effect itself demands a cause in order to account for its own existence; this cause in turn requires a cause, and so on.  If we have an infinite series on our hands, in which each cause itself requires a cause, then nothing could ever have come into existence.

Aquinas explains that there must, therefore, be an Uncaused Cause - a cause that is not itself in need of a cause. Aquinas says this it God.  God is the one self-existing being whose existence is part of His very essence.  No human being must exist; there was a time before each one came into existence, and the world will continue to exist after the last one perishes.  Existence is not part of the essence of every human being.  But God is different, He cannot not exist.  All humans and all things ultimately track back to God.  And He depends on nothing prior to Himself in order to account for His existence.

Which of the author's eight great philosophical questions can you tackle?