We offer Fire Philosophy as a space for living questions—for Nietzsche’s provocations, Zen’s paradoxes and silences, and the uneasy beauty of learning how to live with courage and imagination.

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~ Krzysztof and Dale

The above conversation draws on Dale’s five part series about courage. Below are the installments to give you heart in the midst of life’s challenges. We en-courage-you to read and reflect on them before listening to our conversation above; and if you know someone who could use some encouragement, please share this series with them.

It had been two decades since, as a college sophomore, I, Krzysztof, was in Professor Farred’s class “Richard Wright to Toni Morrison” when I came across Slavoj Žižek’s allusion to Prof. Farred’s short book:

I read it and was delighted by the way my old professor was thinking about what thinking (and living by means of thinking) means, and how to do it beyond our normal understanding of what thinking usually, unthinkingly, entails. Professor Farred writes:

“Thinking cannot be divided into ‘native’ and ‘foreign,’ indigenous or imported, proper or improper (sign and signified), Self and Other, white and black; thinking is indefatigably, resolutely, mischievously, indivisible— it leaves out nothing.”

And later:

“The joke is on the Nazi philosopher, because it is his insistence on thinking that enables the black man to rebut the white woman. Heidegger, the anti-Semite who invokes the “Senegalese negro” as a pedagogical prop, puts me, the black man from Southern Africa, in a position to counter a racist question. What could be more paradoxical than that?”

Dr. Farred was beyond generous to record a conversation with Dale and his former lowly B+ student. Here it is for your enjoyment— nay, for your encouragement to think about thinking.

Quotes from our conversation:

 It seems to me that the remarkable thing about being a teacher is that one has the opportunity to expose one student, not only to what they don't know, but what the teacher does not know.

 But what I realized in retrospect is that having written myself into a corner, I was now free to liberate myself from that corner.

 We do not know when we are thinking, so I'm not sure when I'm thinking, but I always have to guard against not thinking, which means that as a teacher, I have to be thinking as somebody who is trying to write as I do frequently on an almost daily basis, I have to be thinking about whether or not I'm thinking…  What else is there to do? Or in more explicitly philosophical terms, if I'm not thinking, how am I in the world?

Our work is not to affirm our students, our task, the responsibility imposed upon us, is that we have to allow them to come into thinking. We have to help them to come into thinking. We have to continue to think about thinking by ourselves. And most importantly, we have to ask them this question again and again: How are you to be in the world?

 Morrison, as you point out, is a truly remarkable thinker on race. But Morrison's strength, I would argue, derives from the ways in which it is never an explicit object.

 I refuse to be circumscribed in my cannons….  So I don't have to make a choice between Morrison or Baldwin on the one hand and Heidegger on the other. There is too little time to do work to be insisting on those distinctions.

 But what he wants from us is thinking is an openness toward the world. And that's why… the answers are, as you say, not calculative or prescriptive or preordained. They're unknowable in advance.

I wonder if we haven't, as a profession, lost the joy of not knowing and we're so called upon to be experts all the time, and we're so interested in being, God knows, what's this ugly term? Public. A public intellectual… How about the self, the act of self confrontation?

Special guest, Zen scholar Steven Heine joins the Fire Philosophers Dale, Malek, and Krzysztof to explore the multifaceted genius of Bob Dylan through the lens of freedom, detachment, and artistic authenticity. You can find Professor Heine’s book about Dylan here.

Our fiery discussion is sparked by the film A Complete Unknown, delving into Dylan's remarkable ability to dance between worlds — from folk prophet to electric rebel, from Zen-like detachment to prophetic engagement, from his Jewish heritage to a universal, a-political storyteller.

Just as Dylan himself once transformed from Robert Zimmerman into the voice of a generation, our conversation reveals how his songs serve as mirrors reflecting both the times they were written in and our own inner landscapes. Throughout it all, Dylan emerges as a figure who, like Nietzsche's tightrope walker, maintains perfect balance while dancing above the abyss of conventional thinking, helping us to see the extraordinary hiding within the ordinary.

And just like one of Dylan's longer narrative songs, we reflect in our own meandering ways on personal connections to specific songs that have left indelible marks on our lives. From the surreal humor of "Highlands" to the raw emotion of "I Threw It All Away," each song discussion opens new windows into Dylan's artistic soul. If you’re curious about how Dylan's work transcends mere entertainment to become a form of American philosophy set to music — one that challenges, consoles, and occasionally confounds its listeners in equal measure— take a listen.

We’re experimenting at Fire Philosophy with a new arrangement that would establish two levels of engagement with what we’re doing.

Up until now almost all Fire Philosophy content has been offered to everyone free of charge, with a very small segment preserved for those who have voluntarily offered financial support for what we’re doing.

But going forward, we’d like to see how many of you would like to gather into a smaller online community interested in a greater level of involvement, receiving more in depth posts and more opportunity for active engagement. So, with this post today, we are reducing the subscription cost from $9 to $6 in the hopes of gathering some of you into a community of engaged participants.

While some Fire Philosophy content will still be free of charge, from now on, more of our deep posts, events and workshops, book-club offerings, interviews and conversations with poets, philosophers, Zen teachers, and scholars will be reserved for the active community who take this additional step closer to what we are doing.

We hope you enjoy this conversation!

Today, a couple of weeks after our dramatic election, Krzysztof and Dale take up the question from Sam Mowe that we addressed briefly just before the election—what are the grounds for pessimism and/or optimism in the world today and how can we navigate the cycles of intense feeling that politics engender?

We invite you to overcome the passive my-voice-doesn’t-matter-seduction and send us your thoughts, critiques, and questions on these matters!