Skip to main content

About Me

Ryhan Higgins Orshalev


I started this blog because I love philosophy and I also hate philosophy.  It's one of those strange relationships.  What I love about philosophy is that it has the power to transform and reveal myself and allows me to explore untold possibilities.  Nothing intrigues me more than encountering new and compelling ways to look at myself and the world and more interestingly, the challenge of reconciling what seems to be incompatible view points.  That is my current goal right now as I am enthralled by existentialism, yet I see much proverbial fruit waiting to be harvested by finding a way to approach metaphysics without the trappings that it is currently associated with.  

So who am I?  I guess I cannot truly say so in words, but I can give the customary and superficial presentation by telling about my background.  I did my MA in the History and Philosophy of Religion in order to have access to Hindu and Buddhist philosophy.  I decided not to do a Phd since I felt that politics has been playing too strong a role in what people can and cannot write about.  So I felt the best way to do philosophy authentically was to do it not as paid staff, but as a writer and this blog is giving me a creative space to test out certain ideas while polishing my book: The Metaphysics of Pure Will.

The name De-Liberation, sums up my own perception of philosophy and the goal of this blog.  The name is really a play on words denoting both freedom as the French 'liberation'... which is also fitting historically, yet, for myself it indicates the idea of achieving freedom though 'deliberation' the act of deliberating.  Further, we have the connotation of 'deliberate' the idea being to live and act deliberately, so there is a hint at the direction of my teleological reasoning here and what I understand true freedom to be: liberty through both deliberation and deliberate actions in the world.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why Should We Do Philosophy?

When contemplating what philosophy is and specifically what the goals of philosophy are I am reminded of Heidegger's  Introduction to Metaphysics .  In the beginning of this work he discusses what he considers to be false notions of philosophy, which he characterizes as an attempt to rationalize philosophy in scientific terms in order to appease what he deems to be mundane and misplaced standards.  He discusses the common justifications of  how philosophy can lead to practical results: such as forging a distinct culture or society, or if we follow the pre-Socratic current of thought through to the physics of Aristotle and Democritus, we get the preliminary and proto-thought processes necessary for the development of science etc.   After considering these typical justifications Heidegger adds the following: "You hear remarks  such as 'Philosophy leads to nothing,' "you can't do anything with philosophy,'  and readily imagine that they confirm an ex

The Skeptic: 'A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing'?

“Doubt. Doubt thyself.   Doubt even if thou doubtest thyself.   Doubt all.   Doubt even if thou doubtest all.” -E.A. Crowley I remember once about thirty one years ago, I was a child of about five years old. I was walking through the front yard of my house which happened to be a large enough forest to hide my house from the road.   It was a thick forest of oak, maple and birch; I remember trudging my way through a thick undergrowth of ferns, and I remember having a life shaking experience which continues to influence my thought and identity to this day.   I can recall a spontaneous feeling of deja vu creeping over me, a feeling that I always had while dreaming and then realizing that I was in a dream.   I had the sudden experience that I was not truly where I thought I was, and that my sense experiences were but a dream in my mind.   At first I was utterly terrified as that would mean all who I took myself to be and all the people whom I loved were not real.  As I