No us and them

Posted by Helen Douglas
On March 30, 2023

There is no us and them, only us. The white supremacy thing, the patriarchy thing, the class thing: binary structures of inequality and violence. The antidote? Affirming equality already here and getting ourselves together, mixing it up, messing with it. Laugh at it, blow kisses. These structures depend on division, difference. They need walls. They’re […]

Otherwise philosophy, Philosophy otherwise

Posted by Helen Douglas
On November 25, 2021

Levinasian philosophical practices Friday 26 November 2021, 1:00pm–6pm EST. Live-streaming on MS Teams 1:00pm: Welcome and Introduction 1:15pm (8:15 pm in South Africa): Helen Douglas, Philosophical Counsellor, Cape Town, South Africa, “Otherwise Philosophy or Philosophy Otherwise: Levinasian Philosophical Practices”. I’ll be talking about my counselling work as an interpersonal Levinasian practice of ethics and emancipation […]

Posted by Helen Douglas
On August 2, 2021

International Solidarity in Apartheid South Africa Keynote Address North American Levinas Society “Solidarity and Community” 29 July 2021 Need I remind anyone again / that armed struggle is an act of love? ~ Keorapetse Willie Kgositsile In 1987, my husband Rob and I were recruited in Canada to move to Johannesburg to run a safehouse […]

Making sense

Posted by Helen Douglas
On November 17, 2020

Like consciousness is always consciousness of something (if you believe Husserl), making sense is always to someone, to some particular first-person singular. It’s interior, private, personal. That makes sense to me. But I have to ask you, Does this make sense to you?

Posted by Helen Douglas
On June 14, 2020

If black lives mattered, then all lives would matter. If women’s lives mattered, then all lives would matter. If Jewish lives mattered, then all lives would matter. Black in the racialised sense of “not white”. Such that mattering would mean the abandonment of white supremacy.

Posted by Helen Douglas
On May 29, 2020

So I find myself thinking, if there’s this group of people, who are being labelled “essential”, but are being treated as sacrificial, [and] then there’s this other group of people, who are at home – like us, right? – who have the luxury of isolation. So what are we, if we’re not essential? [laugh] Are […]

Posted by Helen Douglas
On May 4, 2020

I am so tired of all the posturing. The lines drawn to keep everything in its place and everyone accountable. The absurd insistence that people do not change. Consider the Anthropocene. A couple of centuries of industrialisation and empire – mere decades, not even a tick in geological time – and boom, our own epoch […]

Posted by Helen Douglas
On October 2, 2018

Last week, I had the pleasure of addressing a conference of family mediators in Cape Town on the topic of “Wisdom in mediation”. Two stories First story. An ethics professor once said to an undergraduate philosophy class, “If you believe that a professor of ethics is an ethical person, you are making a category mistake.” […]

underdog schmunderdog

Posted by Helen Douglas
On August 25, 2018

Beating the opponent at his own game. The pluck and courage of the underdog to outwit and overcome. Why does this strike everyone (I’m talking to you, Western culture) as a good trope? Underdog becomes top dog, it’s still a dog.

Posted by Helen Douglas
On August 17, 2018

These “mixed feelings” of yours. If you have no reason to feel the way you do, and yet you do, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there is no reason (you are irrational), or that you’re wrong to feel that way (you are mistaken), or that you should feel otherwise (you are dissolute).

No us and them

Otherwise philosophy, Philosophy otherwise

The Housekeeper’s Tale

Making sense

Living matters

“The luxury of isolation”

For a post-millenarian philosophy

QA 60. None the wiser (On the obligation and cultivation of wisdom)

underdog schmunderdog

equivocation, ambivalence