Dr. Erik Kuravsky

In my research, I address the theme of human existence in its potential for personal transformation and genuinely spiritual life.

In the traditional systems of metaphysics and theology, we find an assumption of a single universal ground underlying everything that is. This ground is thought of as belonging to things themselves, to God, or to some form of transcendental consciousness. It determines the criteria for freedom, action, ethics, knowledge, and for all meaning. However, after Nietzsche's "death of God," existentialists' revelation of the "absurd," and, most importantly, Heidegger's understanding of Being as an "Event," it became evident that there is no traditional ground on which we could have leaned. Nevertheless, there are still criteria for freedom, meaning, etc. In my work in phenomenology, I look for ways to disentangle our common sense interpretation of such criteria from the traditional metaphysical (and theological) biases and seek to uncover the ways in which genuine spirituality could be achieved. In particular, I engage with the works of Martin Heidegger and Merab Mamardashvili and use their insights to better understand my own existence and what it means for a human being to exist in a thoughtful or mindful way.

 

We must always keep in our minds the relation of philosophy to our life, that is, try to establish such a relation between us and philosophy that philosophy would appear as some vitally important phenomenon related to our ordinary, everyday life - to the extent that it is conscious; to the extent that we try to live life as conscious beings and as worthy of this epithet. After all, without noticing this, and sometimes noticing it, we perform acts of philosophizing in life itself, since the performance of acts of philosophizing is a condition for a certain kind of life. Only then does it become clear why we need the history of philosophy. We need it, although it may seem paradoxical, precisely because there is no history of philosophy.

- Merab Mamardashvili