A Civilizational Diagnosis of Modern Consciousness
Essays (Articles)
Introductory reflections that develop the project’s central claims in conceptual, philosophical, and historical form.
The Absolute After Transcendence
by Brenton L. Delp Modernity did not abolish the Absolute. It relocated it. That is the governing claim of this essay. The familiar story says that the modern world is what remains after transcendence has collapsed: a secular order of technical reason, empirical procedure, private preference, and institutional management. On this telling, the old metaphysical…
Toward a Therapy After the End of Miracles
by Brenton L. Delp Addiction treatment now stands under the immense prestige of medical science, and it should. Medicine has earned authority where death, withdrawal, craving, overdose, and recurrent relapse are concerned. It has corrected the cruelty of moralism, clarified the bodily realities of dependence, and supplied interventions that save lives. A serious account of…
Why Metaphysics Did Not Disappear
by Brenton L. Delp Modernity likes to tell a simple story about itself. The old world believed in God, cosmic hierarchy, fixed essences, and final causes. The modern world, by contrast, is supposed to have outgrown these things. It is empirical, technical, secular, and sober. On this telling, metaphysics has been left behind. What remains…
What Is Addiction? A Philosophical Definition
by Brenton L. Delp Addiction is often defined today under the authority of medical science, and not without reason. The medical model did not become dominant by accident. It became dominant because it corrected older brutalities. It helped displace the view that addiction is simply vice, weakness, or bad character. It named dependence, craving, relapse,…
To Be or Not to Be
By Brenton L. Delp Avicenna, Shakespeare and the Modern Condition “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,And thou no breath at all?” King Lear (5.3.306–307) Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) and William Shakespeare do not belong to the same world, and that fact must be stated clearly at the outset if the connection between them…
Jung and the Archetype
by Brenton L. Delp Jung’s notion of the archetype becomes weakest when it is made too clear. The temptation is always the same: one wants a stable object, a symbolic inventory, a small theology of psychic figures. One wants to say that the archetype is this image, this motif, this mythic personage, this recurring pattern,…
More About Alcoholism
by Brenton L. Delp Margo’s Got Money Troubles ”There would be no one to perform sanity for.” When Margo’s father says that if he got his own place he would surely relapse, the statement sounds at first like simple fear. But it is more revealing than fear. It is a confession about structure. He is…
The First Noble Truth
by Brenton L. Delp The Birth of Consciousness The first noble truth is usually weakened at precisely the point where it becomes difficult. One is told that Buddhism does not really say life is suffering, only that life contains some suffering, or that certain experiences are unpleasant, or that attachment occasionally makes us unhappy. All…
Psychology Without Soul
by Brenton L. Delp “Since uncle Jack died you’ve never been the same.” “Well of course I haven’t, I don’t have uncle Jack anymore, have I?” (Magical Mystery Tour, The Beatles) A peculiar confusion governs much contemporary discourse about mental life. The language is now almost automatic. The brain prioritizes. The brain evaluates. The brain…
Jung, Hegel and the Problem of Opposites
by Brenton L. Delp The comparison between Hegel and Jung becomes most interesting precisely at the point where easy comparison fails. At first glance they can seem to be confronting the same fundamental issue. Both are preoccupied with opposition. Both reject one-sidedness. Both believe that truth does not lie on one side of a division…
When Medicine Became Morality by Other Means
by Brenton L. Delp The modern medical world speaks as though it were simply reporting facts. It presents itself as descriptive, empirical, evidence-based, and therefore beyond the old vulgarities of blame and sermon. Yet anyone who has spent time around discussions of addiction, obesity, depression, sexuality, trauma, chronic illness, or “compliance” knows that medicine very…
Kurt Cobain
Success, Addiction, and Civilizational Neurosis by Brenton L. Delp Around the anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death, the culture remembers him too quickly as icon, victim, or martyr. But Cobain remains more important than remembrance. He is diagnostic. He reveals something about a civilization that can recognize a gift, reward it, amplify it, and still destroy…