I have rarely read as considered an approach to the nature of discourse as the one you structure with the premise that the act of surrender can be as much attuned to an individual’s reasoned and balanced life as the act of weighing choices against a fiercely individualistic perspective. Would that conflicts be forced to pass through an appreciation of the freedom to view oneself as within a structure as well as the freedom to stand apart from any theory, society, or perspective before any of us are confident in our reductiveness.
“I try to phrase my point in a complex way so those who are not familiar with surrender can see the value of it...” I think you accomplished that! People get triggered by the word surrender (in cultures of systemic oppression) so I ended up “rebranding” surrender under other names 😂 keep up the great work!
I'm happy to have stumbled onto your 'Stack! You and I might've overlapped briefly at UCR. I think you and your brother arrived the year I was on my way out. (I'm finishing up a dissertation under the direction of Erich Reck.)
I have a keen interest in our receptivity — one of my projects is to articulate and argue for its misunderstood significance in Kant — so I'm pleased to read a meditation on the theme.
I have a friendly addendum. You've presented two ways of understanding freedom. (Well, that's one way of reading it.) There's being liberated from unchosen constraints in order to create yourself in your own reasoned image, and there's reasonably surrendering to something greater than yourself in order to realize yourself in it. The "somethings greater" you discuss in your post can appear quite big or grand, and at one point you mention one's binding one's will to "one's entire social and natural context." But as your closing examples show, they need not be so.
Indeed, as a certain tradition has it, you might find yourself in your family, your neighborhood, your church, or your woods, for example, but very rarely will you find yourself in your nation-state, the free market, some global order, or humanity writ large. (Plato's ideal city is, after all, a city-state.) Not that the latter are necessarily uninspiring things. It's just that they can be frustratingly abstract and distant — a will bound to them can feel bound only tenuously, so almost pointlessly. According to the tradition I have in mind, it's surrender to the thicker, more local, more tangible attachments that cultivates the transcendent realization of your freedom. (Think, for example, of the nature and function, according to Confucian ethics, of ritual respect toward one's family.)
I have rarely read as considered an approach to the nature of discourse as the one you structure with the premise that the act of surrender can be as much attuned to an individual’s reasoned and balanced life as the act of weighing choices against a fiercely individualistic perspective. Would that conflicts be forced to pass through an appreciation of the freedom to view oneself as within a structure as well as the freedom to stand apart from any theory, society, or perspective before any of us are confident in our reductiveness.
Omg I love this! I have found surrender (to Life) to be the ultimate act of freedom, that creates profound balance 😁😁😁💗💗💗🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾
“I try to phrase my point in a complex way so those who are not familiar with surrender can see the value of it...” I think you accomplished that! People get triggered by the word surrender (in cultures of systemic oppression) so I ended up “rebranding” surrender under other names 😂 keep up the great work!
Hi Daniel,
I'm happy to have stumbled onto your 'Stack! You and I might've overlapped briefly at UCR. I think you and your brother arrived the year I was on my way out. (I'm finishing up a dissertation under the direction of Erich Reck.)
I have a keen interest in our receptivity — one of my projects is to articulate and argue for its misunderstood significance in Kant — so I'm pleased to read a meditation on the theme.
I have a friendly addendum. You've presented two ways of understanding freedom. (Well, that's one way of reading it.) There's being liberated from unchosen constraints in order to create yourself in your own reasoned image, and there's reasonably surrendering to something greater than yourself in order to realize yourself in it. The "somethings greater" you discuss in your post can appear quite big or grand, and at one point you mention one's binding one's will to "one's entire social and natural context." But as your closing examples show, they need not be so.
Indeed, as a certain tradition has it, you might find yourself in your family, your neighborhood, your church, or your woods, for example, but very rarely will you find yourself in your nation-state, the free market, some global order, or humanity writ large. (Plato's ideal city is, after all, a city-state.) Not that the latter are necessarily uninspiring things. It's just that they can be frustratingly abstract and distant — a will bound to them can feel bound only tenuously, so almost pointlessly. According to the tradition I have in mind, it's surrender to the thicker, more local, more tangible attachments that cultivates the transcendent realization of your freedom. (Think, for example, of the nature and function, according to Confucian ethics, of ritual respect toward one's family.)
At any rate, I thought this was a lovely post.