The Growth of a Thinker : a Chapbook of Poems

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Call Number: 811 De
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Praise for the book, book description, about the author, free download submitted by dejnozka on January 22, 2016, 10:28am PRAISE 1:

"Great read!" — Panayot Butchvarov

Panayot Butchvarov has been President of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association and was chair of the University of Iowa Department of Philosophy for many years.

PRAISE 2:

"The poems look great!" — Paul C. Nascimbene

Paul Nash (Paul C. Nascimbene) and his wife Denise La Neve are active on the northern New Jersey poetry scene, and are two of the five co-editors of Beyond the Rift: Poets of the Palisades (The Poet's Press). Paul is also co-author of several scientific papers, some of which have made the national news. He is a researcher in Paleoentomological Research and Collections, Division of Invertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History in New York City, goes on fossil collection expeditions around the world, and has been President of the New York Paleontological Society.

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

This chapbook of poems shows the growth of a thinker over a period of forty years. It contains most of the poems the author wrote during that time. The main subjects are philosophy, religion, and mythology. There are poems about love, karma, realization, death, rebirth, different religions and deities, and mysticism. The last two poems are the ones of primary philosophical interest. They explore and offer a unified theory of more technical topics such as perception and evidence, universals and particulars, being and nothingness, essence and accident, reality and illusion, ontology and metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics, justice and mercy, and personal and impersonal ultimate spiritual reality. In "Karma" (22 pages), I put the karmic thesis through its paces and find it wanting on every level. I examine karma from the standpoint of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. I discuss: whether the alleged law of karma is descriptive of causal fact or prescriptive of an ethical norm, whether punitive karmic justice is better than religious mercy; whether karma is based on reason or is an article of faith; whether karma is an intellectual theory or a practical working maxim; whether karma is a universal truth ("universal" means without exception) or a merely general truth ("general" means true in most cases, or at least in many cases, or at least sometimes); whether the ontological locus of karma is in reality or in Maya, the world-illusion; whether karma is a vehicle, bridge, or ladder from the world of illusion to the world of reality, or even to a mystical nirvana that is beyond good and evil, and whether it is to be dropped or set aside upon arrival at the destination; and the karmic rule of conduct versus the Golden Rule of conduct (the two rules are very different). In the last poem, "The Real and the relative," I summarize my own ontology with respect to the topics mentioned in the poem's title.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jan Dejnožka (pronounced Yon DAY-no-shka) was born on December 20, 1951 in Saratoga Springs, New York to Ladislav and Helen Garrett Dejnožka. He earned a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1979 from the University of Iowa and a J.D. in law in 1996 from the University of Michigan. He taught philosophy at the University of Iowa and the U.S. Naval Academy, was a Visiting Scholar in Law and Philosophy in the Rackham School of Graduate Studies at the University of Michigan, and is a Research Fellow in Philosophy at Union College. His works include The Ontology of the Analytic Tradition and Its Origins (Littlefield Adams), Bertrand Russell on Modality and Logical Relevance (first edition, Ashgate, second edition, CreateSpace), The Concept of Relevance and the Logic Diagram Tradition (CreateSpace), Logical Relevance in English Evidence Law: Its History and Impact on Keynes and Russell (CreateSpace), Two Sermons (CreateSpace), and over twenty papers in philosophy and law. In 1992 he married Chung Hwa Choi, born in Seoul, South Korea. The Dejnožkas have two daughters, Julie and Marina.

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