Presence

I'm heading up to Vermont tomorrow, sans Peninah and the kids, for my first cousin's Bar Mitzvah. The service is in Burlington; I'm set up about two miles away in a hotel with the rest of the family. It's supposed to rain, which will make the walk to shul less than fun, but such is what we do for family. The party afterwards is on a boat, so I won't be able to attend; I'll head back to the hotel and spend the day reading, which, hopefully, will not drive me out of my mind.

The reading list for this weekend, not including Parshas Behar-Bechukosai (Lev. 25-27) is:

• The Azure article on Eliezer Berkovits and Zionism - I read the first page, and it promises to be very interesting, not only because Berkovits thought of my whole Presence approach about 40 years ago.


• From Commentary Magazine, Jews, Christians, and "The Passion", by David Berger. I can't get this article to Furl.


• The Illusion of Technique, by William Barrett. You probably know Barrett from Irrational Man, the book that introduced Existentialism to America in the '50s. He hasn't written much, but what he did is gold. Besides the overarching thesis of each one of his treatments, a Barrett book inevitably provides a thorough, practical walkthrough of the thought of usually at least three major philosophers. This time around, it's Wittgenstein, Heidegger and William James. I've been picking away at this book for a few months now, and I'm hoping to get some solid time in reading it this weekend; there is a lot of stuff in here, not to mention the fact that he uses Presence with a capitol "P" a whole bunch. The basic premise of the book is a look at philosophy's recent attempts to capture Truth within some kind of system or technology. Whether this is Descartes in the mind, or Russell in language, the end result has always been a system that promises more than it can return. The aforementioned philosophers all played a part in developing thought that extracts Truth from within the confines of these systems, and locates it somewhere in the world. If you've read the Berkovits article above, you might be able to draw some connections between the ideas expressed in the first few pages and this stuff. Or I might be a complete heretic.

That's about all I have for now. I'm thinking I might need some fiction as well, perhaps I'll pick something up in the airport, or my brother will have something interesting.