With the entire human world and our planet itself now dangerously trembling and transforming all around us, serious philosophical conversation about such things as God, nature, and the meaning of human life may be precisely what is needed now in our world and in our lives - perhaps more than anything else.
Jacob Needleman will present a Friday night lecture and discussion on Feb. 3rd from 7:00 - 9:00 p.m., followed by a Saturday workshop on Feb. 4th from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (includes a catered lunch) at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Monterey Peninsula, 490 Aguajito Road, Carmel, CA. 831-624-7404
In the friday night lecture we will identify and briefly confront the funda- mental questions that all of us, as human beings, are sooner or later compelled to face in our lives: Does God exist? Who Am I? Why do we suffer? What Can We Hope For? How Should We Live?
During the workshop, we will offer practical exercises and philosophical conversation with special emphasis on the unknown work of listening to another human being. We will try to show that the ancient ideal of philosophical friendship, having almost totally disappeared from our culture, represents for us a new and very attainable and very necessary form of care between human beings - the beginning of morality, even the beginning of love. The direction of our personal life, and the direction of our country and perhaps our world, may depend on discovering this lost art of philosophical friendship.
View workshop details...Upcoming Public Engagements:
Point Reyes Dialogues with Jacob Needleman:
Video Interview at Samford University:
Point Reyes Dialogues, originating at KWMR in Point Reyes Station, (California) explores with renowned host Jacob Needleman (author, social philosopher and commentator) the great questions of life and our current condition with eminent friends from the arts, science and spirituality, politics and public service. Jacob Needleman is host of the Point Reyes Dialogues and Sylvia Timbers is the series producer.
One of the central aims of these dialogues is to reawaken the art of
conversation as a passionate work of opening one's mind to another human
being. Conversation such as this is rapidly disappearing in our present world.
Yet the work of 'non-egoistic listening and thinking together' is the rock
upon which is based not only the American ideal of democracy, but the very
possibility of ethical action in our morally and physically threatened world.
Our premise is that new territories of collaboration and creativity open with
the inner work of listening and thinking together, leading to ethical action
in the world.
What Is God?:
Now available in paperback (12/30/2010)
"In his most deeply personal work, religious scholar Needleman cuts a clear path
through today's clamorous debates over the existence of God, illuminating an
entirely new way of approaching the question of how to understand a higher power.
In this new book, philosopher Jacob Needleman - whose voice and ideas have done so
much to open the West to esoteric and Eastern religious ideas in the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries - intimately considers humanity's most vital question: What
is God?"
Learn more...
Audio/Video & Articles:
Click for videos, audio, and interviews and articles to download
November 30, 2009