Dr. Freeman

Hello friends

My first book has just been published by Peter Lang and is out now!
 
It’s titled: Post-Metaphysics and the Paradoxical Teachings of Jesus: the Structure of the Real… and you can check it at and even take a peek inside here…

It’s revolutionary stuff… Within its 330 pages I uncover the authentic voice-print of Jesus’ radical teachings on the Kingdom of God and thereby outlines a new approach to theological language after the end of metaphysics.

By showing that the paradoxical deep structure of Jesus’ most radical teachings survives the Death of God and the deconstruction of metaphysics in twentieth-century continental philosophy, this book aims to reconstruct the original teachings of Jesus in a way that can begin a new conversation on what it means to be a Christian in a post-Christian world, while drawing on a remarkable range of supporting material, including John D. Caputo’s award-winning theological appropriation of Derridas deconstruction, the pioneering work of John Dominic Crossan on the parables of Jesus, and the novel insights of Jesus Seminar scholars Robert Funk and Branden Scott. Beginning with questions surrounding the end of metaphysics in Martin Heideggers existentialist philosophy and moving on to the ethico-political dimensions of Derridas work, this volume examines Nicholas of Cusas notion of God as the coincidence of opposites, Buddhist genius Nagarjunas dialectic of Emptiness, and the Hindu concept of non-duality in raising the possibility of a post-metaphysical theology. Following an original unpacking of the parables of Jesus, the central thesis is woven together with reference to Moltmanns important work on the crucified God, as well as Kierkegaard and the Absolute Paradox, negative/mystical theology in the Christian tradition, twentieth-century Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro, and aspects of Nietzsche, Thomas Aquinas, Plato, Aristotle, Meister Eckhart, G. K. Chesterton, Slavoj Zizek and Ken Wilber.

Here’s a couple of reviews to hopefully spark your interest:
 
“Cameron Freeman breathes a new life of interaction with the Word into the familiar stories of Jesus that we so easily and dangerously think we understand. Freeman shows how continuously subverting is the teaching of Jesus towards all complacency and all attempts to tame that radical knowing of God that is the Gospel and that has changed the way human beings see God and themselves. With intelligence and careful scholarship this book also transmits that first thrill of seeing what Jesus is really getting at and the relief of seeing superficial interpretations collapse.”

-Father Laurence Freeman director of the World Community of Christian Meditation and widely published author

“In this fascinating book, Cameron Freeman has done two things usually considered to be between the improbable and the impossible. First, he says something new and interesting about the parables of Jesus by pondering them not just as discrete stories but as a total discourse. Second, he challenges the long-held ascendancy of philosophy over theology by using the deep structure of that parabolic complex as normative not just for Christian theology but even for post-modern philosophy itself.”

-John Dominic Crossan world renowned New Testament scholar, best-selling author and co-founder of the Jesus Seminar

“This work undercuts the assumption that post modernism’s criticism of Western metaphysics leads to either nihilism or atheism. Dr. Freeman takes to heart the criticism of Heidegger and Derrida and uses their insights to illuminate the heart of the Christian message making it accessible to the post modern mind. It is an invaluable contribution that will set the pace of theology well into the future.”

-Rev. Gregory J. Mayers, C.Ss.R., Zen Teacher of the Sanbo-Kyodan Religious Foundation and of the Empty Cloud Sangha, Director of the East-West Meditation Program at Mercy Center in Burlingame, CA 
 
Take a look and buy yourselves a copy. Why? Because the paradoxical secret in radical center of Christ’s teachings is guaranteed to shatter the complacency of civilized normalacy with a weird intrusion from the Real… for Truth is not so much “inner peace” but a painful, traumatic encounter with the dazzling obscurity of the midnight sun!
The reverse side also has a reverse side.

G’day each and all,

A big hello from Kao San road (Bangkok)…. and a brief update on my
Euro-Asian travel adventures, where the goal of the journey is always
and already accomplished, and so never really attained… Some
memorable fragments in chronological order:

Thailand - I suppose Cold Chisel put it best in the Aussie rock
classic Kao San, “I’ve been to South East Asia, and the Answer sure
ain’t there…” Sagely advice, for IMHO we would do well to give up on
the popular Western idea that the ultimate pillar of Wisdom, the
secret spiritual treasure can be recaptured out here in the East, in
this forbidden exotic place… The ugly truth is that Thailand is
really just an Asian version of the capitalist Wild West - karaoke
bars intermingled with Buddhist theme parks and massage parlors for
Western tourists… Ko Phi Phi Island is great case in point – sublime
and majestic when first seen from afar, a kind of heaven on earth…
but up close it is a paradise of filth, a gigantic pile of shit… Go
there and see for yourself… And Patong – where civilized Westerners
come by the thousands to do the Western men do - penetrate the exotic
Other - is both fascinating and terrifying… A little friendly
advice, the best looking girls are really boys and don’t ring the bell
at the bar – or you’ll be shouting the entire bar a drink…

So to escape the debauchery of Phuket in the south I went directly to
Chang Mai in the north where I met a girl named Fhar, we drank
together most evenings while I tried to convert her to Christianity
arguing that Buddhism seeks a fictitious peace beyond the pull of
competing forces… and that in SE Asia this once noble religion has
become a blank screen for the projection of Western ideological
fantasies… this last shelter of ancient Wisdom is really just a
primitive superstition propped up by cheap tricks and magic rituals…
She is still a Buddhist - and I don’t know who I am, but we had a
memorable time together…

Europe…

I agree with Ken Wilber here: I love the southern European climate
(France, Italy, Croatia) but prefer the northern European people
(Germans, Dutch, some of the English). Unfortunately in Europe you
can’t have it all - it’s either one or the other… Nature or
Culture… I think this is what Slovenian philosopher Zizek means by
the irreducible “gap” in the heart of the Real…

Germany/Mainz – I was here for a Christian meditation conference,
which reminded me of precisely how deluded and ignorant I really am –
and that joining a monastic community would only reinforce this
illusion…

But one of the most memorable experiences was sitting at the local bar
in Mainz pretending to read the drinks menu in German, only to lookup
up and see a long pair of German legs attached to a g-string and a
topless red hot body standing above me on the bar – I open my mouth in
astonishment and this very cheeky woman begins to pour a bottle of
vodka down my throat… after which I could speak fluid German…
later that night I met and flirted with the two blonde-bombshells from
the band “Funk Factory”, who were actually on TV the following day,
apparently their really big in Hamburg…

France/Taize – a very unique place for thousands of young Christians
to come to live and worship in a contemporary style of contemplative
prayer, with some very wise and compassionate brothers running the
show… One time, we studied the Book of Job at one of the gatherings
and I learnt a lot about “letting go” of the need to make meaning out
of ones life… The shocking truth of the Book of Job (one of the
central texts Western civilization) is that God does NOT guarantee for
us in an orderly universe or a purposeful existence - Rather, God
tells Job that the whole of creation is a radical accident… and
since there is no Big Story that makes things make sense, we are
better off just accepting that we live in a world of meaningless
suffering…

So the key to deep and abiding peace is to give up the need to find an
explanation for our suffering or a “reason why” to explain what
happens to us - The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are just
a heroic fiction - nothing more - things DO NOT happen for a reason…
The secret is that there is no Secret that makes things make sense –
Yeah, the Bible rocks!

Next installment coming soon…

Cameron Freeman

I’ve just finished reading “The Future of Human Nature” by Jurgen Habermas, the world renown German philosopher and one of the last true believers in the ideals of the Western Enlightenment. He has a really interesting argument against stem cell research and genetic engineering that is based on a completely rational-secular point of view.

Habermas puts the question like this: Is it morally acceptable for free and rational agents such as “bio-tech” scientists to alter the genetic code of future generations? And this is the gist of his argument:

Moral agents (e.g. bio-scientists) are members of a moral community who owe duties to each other of reciprocity, mutuality and equality. But: the alteration of the genetic identity of another requires a diminution in this presupposition of equality, and cannot be reciprocal or mutual. So such an act is not a moral act, of the sort we would want done to us without our explicit informed consent. We would consider it inappropriate if we did it to adults. It is not an interpersonal act of mutual respect. So it is not a moral act.

Habermas is basically saying that there is a reduced moral responsibility for a person whose genetic code is tinkered with tailored toward someone else’s (e.g. parental, social, bio-scientists) dreams and expectations… In other words, a person who becomes aware of his programmed genetic nature will feel less free and less responsible, because the boundary between what a person is given (biologically) and what we make of ourselves (culturally) has been irreversibly interfered with…

So why be moral in the first place? Habermas argues that our current understanding of what it is to be moral presupposes a self image of ourselves as free, autonomous, self-legislating beings, and as such requires us to treat other moral agents in a way that attributes the same self-understanding to them.

This means that genetic intervention in future generations to select desirable dispositions entails prejudgment of specific life projects, which threatens the self-image of a potential moral equal, and requires us to act toward a potential equal in a way that is incompatible with the action of a moral agent. Therefore, what is at stake in bio-ethical debates is the ethical self-understanding of the species: whether or not we can continue to see ourselves as beings committed to moral judgment and action.

The bottom line: we must acknowledge the dignity of a potential human life, the embryo; and not use it as a means to any other end than its own best interests and future autonomy. That means, no experimentation on embryos, not even for the sake of advancement of genetic sciences for the improvement of present patients or future generations.

But what if we can reasonably suppose that the embryo’ best-interests are being served? Surely genetic enhancements can be motivated by genuinely good intentions, one’s that the pre-personal embryo would agree with? Can bio-ethicists anticipate consent?