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Interview with Dr. John Hanley - Page 14 JH: (Continued) Let me just backtrack a bit. So, philosophy's job, more or less, has been to tell us what it means to be a human being. And if we look at philosophy in the long view, we'll note that from time to time--every 100 years or every 500 years or every 1,000 years--what it means to be human and, therefore, what possibilities are available to human beings, change. And they change because some philosopher, like Plato, for example, comes up with a heck of an argument and people say, "Yeah, that's right. It sounds right. Yeah, that's what we are." Well, then Kierkegaard and Heidegger come along and say, "Hey, you know what? Maybe, but maybe not. Maybe Descartes didn't get it exactly right." They say, "Hey, we know how you've described what it means to be a human being and what's possible for a human being." And there's a certain metaphysics which each generation, or every third or fourth generation, of philosophers has made known and that has been accepted as the way it is to be human. And that definition--that metaphysical description, if you will--opens certain possibilities for action and closes certain other possibilities for action. Well, Kierkegaard and then, subsequently, Heidegger said, "Well, what if there wasn't any real metaphysics? What if there was no 'This is really, really this time, no kidding, we've found it, this is what it means to be a human being?'" And with that--the idea of what it means to be a human being as an interpretation--if you play with that, you begin to see that, "Hmm…so there's no home plate for human beings; so there's really no real 'what it means to be a human being.'" Then the idea of being able to declare what it means to be me and declare what I'm up to and declare the possibility that my life is opens up. So that's a little short summary of the sort of philosophic background of the transformational training. |
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