Steven Parmenius

The oppressor/oppressed binary is, even as a matter of ordinary observation, the easiest to deconstruct. The latter apes the brutality of the former out of the ‘tragic necessity of struggle’ and out of the same ‘tragic necessity’ comes simply to replace him. Habituated to the ‘tragic necessity’ of violence he can do no other. The man who kills crosses a Rubicon and there may be no way back. Violence is his friend; his trusted tool and he will always be true to it. We need a deeper moral language than is covered by this distinction which blurs so readily even a child can see it. In fact, it may just be a distinction for sentiment, necessary sentiment perhaps but not grounded in the intrinsic reason of things. Give yourself once to butchery and I can’t see, barring miracle, how you can can go back. Once you taste power in the form of power over a life you have crossed a line you can’t simply uncross. You have eaten forbidden fruit and the taste can only get sweeter if it does not dull ...

                   In this essay I will argue two things, The first is that Protestants and atheists are ruining the cultural discourse of North America and probably other nations as well. The second is that Protestants and atheists are the same people. Where I am concerned there is not a scintilla of difference between them. I used to think this relationship was dialectical in the sense I shall explain below. I have discovered, though, that it is literal as well. A great deal of ‘atheist’ discourse is being generated by bitter ex-Protestants who have not changed either their personality or style of engagement. Nor have they overcome their deep anti-intellectualism. In fact, they have intensified it. Other individuals may not be jaundiced ex-fundies but, in the U.S. especially, live in a culture defined by Evangelical Protestantism whether positively or negatively. Thus, by osmosis they absorb its theological categories and replicate the...

In the Renaissance it was thought that Philosophy came from Egypt. This is because the texts of the Corpus Hermeticum were thought to be the work of Hermes Trismegistus, who, according to some at least, was the teacher of both Moses and the Greeks. This it turns out was incorrect. The Hermetic texts were the product of a Hellentistic environment that post-dated the Common Era. By a delicious irony, however, it has turned out that the Renaissance was right after all. Philosophy (in our hemisphere at least) does indeed come from Egypt and it is just such a Philosophy as we find in the Hermetic tradition. We know this because of a text discovered in the 19th century and deciphered in the last one called the Memphite Theology which, though the language is poetic, is clearly a work of speculative theology and indeed the oldest expression of what we might call speculative idealism: the idea that mind is the root of all phenomenal reality. This is a remarkable achievement indeed and it is o...

                The empirical is a myth and, if I were an empiricist, I suppose I would say that is a bad thing (the myth being concerned, as Aristotle says, with the most abstract and general). It isn’t, however, a bad thing at all. It is just a thing. This myth is a powerful representation of what is means to know. It is an image of knowing and images of knowing can be good or bad depending on their application. Certainly, the myth of the empirical can lead us down some very unproductive paths. It has emancipatory potential too even on a direct social level. The myth of the empirical is, like other powerful myths, complex and multifaceted. The myth of the empirical is, for one thing, a democratic myth. All persons qua persons possess the basic capacity for observation. At the same time ‘the empirical’ is a possession of the cadre of specialists we call scientists. The empirical is directly to hand for all to ...

                   What, in the 21 st century, stands as a public reason in North American societies? This is a harder question than many assume for our notion of what constitutes public reason is currently in flux. A reason is public if it stands as a legitimate ground of explicit or implicit social coercion. A reason is public when it is of such authority and objectivity that persons can legally be compelled to recognize it. This is explicit in relation to vaccines and public heath measures or in the certification of various kinds of professionals. Coercion is implicit in terms of pressure applied not by governments but by the broader society as in Facebook shaming or cancelling of speakers. It can also be implicit in the writing of curricula for schools for children need to be taught something and bureaucrats and administrators determine what this something is. Nor can the diverse wishes of citizens and parents be perfectly accommod...

  Well, the short answer is, yes, it is, because the secular is a construct by and for Christians that can only serve (white) Christian hegemony. This is not to say, by the way, that secularity itself a bad thing when understood in a broader sense. It is to say that there are regional and provincial constructions of the secular that do not and cannot work in a globalized society except as forces of entrenchment and reaction. This will take some explaining especially to such readers as may be French or American (assuming they have read past the first sentence!). There are many problems in Canada and one can get very frustrated with its culture of virtuous mediocrity but if there is ONE thing I think Canada HAS figured out it is how to construct a secularity beyond secularism. This is important because it allows Canada to welcome immigrants from Asia and elsewhere who cannot live in any dogmatic construction of a secular society and still express their particular identities (for reas...