Sunday, February 16, 2014

on the tragedy of life

Although I am not technologically savvy enough to figure out how many times any one specific mp3 has been downloaded from my blog, I was amazed to see that quite a number of folks downloaded the only two items that I've posted to my academia.edu page (which does have a counter) in the mere week or so that those items have been up.

I am guessing that the mp3s posted on my blog are downloaded frequently, as those links on my academia page received some great traffic in a very short period of time, and the majority of the downloads on my academia page were routed from my blog (furthering my thought that while not many people actually use academia.edu on a frequent basis, it still can be a great source of exposure for one's work).

The topics of the lectures deal with melancholy and my position of "bleak theology" or "bleak metaphysics," part of my overall project of speculative naturalism.  I am amazed by the response that I've gotten so far and am encouraged by how many folks downloaded the talks in the week that they've been up.

For those interested, the bleak metaphysical perspective is something that I've been working on behind the scenes for awhile.  For the foreseeable future I plan to keep reading/researching in this area.

See for example:

"Bleak Metaphysics" lecture (MP3 audio download)

"Speculative Naturalism: A Bleak Theology in Light of the Tragic"

"God is in Pain"

"Melancholy and the Otherness of God"

"Peirce's Melancholy"

"Bleak Theology on Bleak Theology"

"Guest post in Bleak Theology/Speculative Naturalism" (guest post for the website Homebrewed Christianity)

And speaking of bleakness and melancholy: Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and their connections to a bleak perspective make appearances rather timely for me in this recent 3:AM interview HERE.