Welcome to Camels With Hammers! For an overview of the ideas I argue for on this site with links to the vast majority of my original posts, please go read Camels With Hammers Philosophy. For an introduction to me and to my goals with Camels With Hammers keep reading below the picture.
About Camels With Hammers:
The main foci of Camels With Hammers are contemporary ethical paradigms, normative theories, moral psychology, secularism, Nietzsche interpretation, general philosophical education for non-specialists, and commentary on politics and other current affairs from philosophical perspectives. Additionally, the blog contributes to the on-going efforts of the atheist community to create a constructive atheistic philosophy which can be a force philosophically, culturally, and, where appropriate, politically. The blog also occasionally reviews and promotes independent film and music. Occasionally more mainstream music and films are of interest—but usually that’s when Tom Petty, Batman, or Spider-Man are involved in said music or films.
About me:
My name is Daniel Fincke. I was raised a devout Evangelical Christian in a low church denomination (the Church of Christ) and I went to one of the most conservative Christian colleges in the country (Grove City College) for my undergraduate education. There I majored in philosophy, minored in religion, and left the faith in my senior year. That was ten years ago now and in the intervening time I have become a specialist on Friedrich Nietzsche and contemporary moral philosophy. On April 28, 2010 I successfully defended my dissertation in philosophy at Fordham University under the direction of Professor John Davenport and earned a PhD.
Teaching:
Since January of 2003 I have taught philosophy at the college level first as a teaching fellow and then as a teaching associate and an adjunct professor. For 7 years until December 2009 I taught philosophy at Fordham University, along the way spending time at the Rose Hill, Lincoln Center, and Westchester campuses. I have also taught at as an adjunct professor at William Paterson University (2003-present), St. John’s University (September 2008-May 2010), and Fairfield University (January 2010-present), and in the fall of 2010 will start teaching at Hofstra University as an adjunct assistant professor. I have taught Philosophical Ethics, Business Ethics, Philosophy of the Person, Philosophy of Human Nature, and Introduction to Philosophy. In 2005 Fordham University’s Graduate Students Association named me “Teaching Associate of the Year” based on nominations from my students.
Dissertation:
The title of my dissertation is “On Deriving and Defending an Axiology of the Will to Power”. In it I first developed a systematic reading of Nietzsche’s texts which yields a coherent reading of his overall philosophy, in terms of which I was able to reconcile his critical attack on morality with his constructive philosophical views on the nature and possibility for ethics. In the final chapter, I developed my own ethical theory as a version of Nietzsche’s which nonetheless diverges with him in some pivotal places and which incorporates the insights of 20th-21st Century thinkers.
Invitation To Philosophy Non-Specialists:
I encourage non-specialists in philosophy to use this blog as a place to learn serious philosophy, try their hand at serious philosophical debate, and get clarification about obscure philosophical terms or concepts that are stumbling blocks to their participation in philosophical discussions. Please read more of how I view the educational potential of the blog in this post I wrote on the subject.
Invitation To Fellow Philosophers and Other Academics:
I hope philosophers and other academics from all fields and points of view will help me sharpen my ideas through their criticisms and suggestions in replies to my posts and to those of their fellow commentators. I believe that blogs can be a strong medium for members of the academic community to improve each other’s thought through providing unusual opportunities for cross-disciplinary interaction and a convenient forum for testing and correcting ideas which are not yet ready for publication. I look forward to both sharpening my best arguments and abandoning my worst ones as a result of fellow philosophers’, academics’ and laypeople’s contributions.
Invitation To Dissenters And Questioners:
I welcome philosophical questions, challenges, and topic suggestions from all manner of readers and am excited to base my blog entries on these whenever it will serve my readership best.
Invitation To Philosophers, Scientists, And Social Scientists Who Would Like To Contribute:
I invite you to become a camel with a hammer yourself. Apply to be a guest contributor to the blog, especially if you have complementary specialties to my own and/or general philosophical affinities to this blog’s. If you have an idea for either a single post or a recurring contribution to the blog, please write me with your ideas and your CV.
I also welcome thinkers who disagree with the general views expressed on the blog to suggest planned debates with me to be featured on the blog on either one occasion or in a semi-regularly recurring feature.
Follow Camels With Hammers:
I can be found on twitter under the name camelshammers and on the Facebook page for Camels With Hammers, subscribe to either or both so you don’t miss any news about the site, and so that you can peer deeper into my mind. You may also invite me to be your friend on Facebook and receive updates there every time the blog updates.
Contact Me:
Dave (our webmaster) and I want your feedback on what we do well and what we can improve to meet your blog reading needs better. Contact us at camelswithhammers@gmail.com if you have something to say to us privately!
Your Thoughts?
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15 Comments
Hello Daniel,
I’m a relatively new reader, but I find your commentary very insightful. I was wondering if you might be able to comment on the following for me(providing you have the time and impetus to do so):
“A little common sense would help here. Attacking the perverts of religion, which are the exception not the norm, or inventing imaginary reasons the imaginary religious right doesn’t support our future bankruptcy by health care, is not going to do anything constructive to cause more people to become atheists. What is woefully lacking in atheism is any real leaders who can construct a social framework that works as well as the social frameworks produced by religious people along with anyone who can intelligently communicate that framework to the culture. Any idiot can make fun of religious people or find inconsistencies in peoples lives, which doesn’t disprove religion as much as it proves peoples need for it. Idiots can destroy, it takes genius to create. When atheism produces people who are committed to constructing an atheistic paradigm to live by with the kinds of values, norms, taboos, etc. that have governed our current culture for millennia, then it will be able to compete for peoples devotion. Right now it is both profitable and safe to criticize religion. That’s because the freedom that provides both is based on a religious value system. When men are willing to lose their freedom, their money, their families, their homes, their honor, their careers, and their lives for atheism, then they will change and shape the world the way religious men have. Until then they’ll just sit comfortably on the fringes of culture involving themselves in their rhetorical masturbation sessions, tell jokes that only their cronies laugh at and make criticisms of religious people that even their own advocates acknowledge and resent. Quit borrowing from the bank of cultural theism and start producing what you pretend to so desperately want. Try living like a true atheist for a week and you’ll learn why your not an atheist as much as you are an anti-theist. In the words of that great atheistic philosopher, the Joker, “Introduce a little anarchy”. See how much you appreciate a religious culture that provides you the freedom to leach off of it’s values.”
Thanks a lot!
Lowrack
Hey, thanks Lowrack for the provocative remark, I already know a few things I want to say about it as soon as I get the chance. I’m a little confused as to whether it comes from you or from someone else, given that you put it in quotes. I have a long busy day of teaching today so will not be able to type out an adequate reply until tomorrow or so, but when I do who should I cite, you or someone else when quoting what you wrote?
thanks!
Hey, sorry about that. I neglected to give credit there. The author was AgentChaos and his comments were quoted from a thread at American Atheists titled “Nones are growing, but Atheists stagnant”. Here’s the link if you’d like to get some context for the discussion:
http://atheists.org/blog/2009/09/22/nones-are-growing-but-atheists-stagnant
Thanks, and I look forward to your response!
Lowrack
Hi Lowrack,
Sorry I’ve still not attended to this comment you raise. I hopefully will soon!
Hi Daniel
thanks for adding your blog to A World Beyond Belief – have now added the feed and a short intro.
http://aworldbeyondbelief.blogspot.com/2009/09/camels-with-hammers.html
After 25 years I still re-read Nietzsche. As he said, the world revolves around the philosopher, except that once ideas become accepted the originating philosophers are often forgotten.
Good work!
Thanks Rycharde! So sorry for not acknowledging your comment sooner. Feel free to throw me a Nietzsche related topic that might interest you. I tend to write better when provoked and few people provoke me to cover Nietzsche here but I really should!
Daniel,
Imagine my surprise when, as an undergraduate student about to embark on Theology and Philosophy concentrations, I discovered that you are a teacher at my very own Fordham University!
I’m at Rose Hill, and I wonder if you are still teaching here, and if our scholastic/philosophical paths will ever cross.
Hi Sean,
So sorry I never acknowledged this comment, I meant to contact you directly. I am no longer at Fordham now since I graduated in May, but will be in the city nonetheless and be delighted to be in touch with a Fordham student to talk philosophy and theology matters. Just e-mail me at camelswithhammers@gmail.com and I hope to see you contributing Your Thoughts to the blog soon!
The purpose of life is to have as many enjoyable experiences and sensations as possible before we die. There is nothing else we need to know.
morals? what is right and what is wrong? Do we really need anyone (especially theologians) to tell us?
I am praying for you.
Have a blessed day!
This made me sigh.
I appreciate the sentiment, taylor, but I’d much rather you think with me. I hope to see you and your ideas on the blog and will be glad to read anything you write that you’d like me to see.
Best wishes.
Oh, my friend, it takes a lot of thinking actually. You see, God gave us His word so that we would understand Him, so we would know what to pray. There is not a more powerful position for a believer to be in than to be praying the word of God in the name of Jesus. Prayers that work are when you pray the Word of GOD. To do this, one must think. You must actually know what the bible says in order to pray it. You must know what God has promised you in order to talk to Him about it. Romans 10:17 says faith comes from the Word of God. Many people have spent endless hours praying prayers something like this: “Dear God, thank you for everything. I really wish I could do better at this or that… I am having a hard time at work and I need your help.” (Just a random example.) If people would read the word, their prayers would go something like this, “God, Im coming before you in the name of Jesus… the only name by which YOu said men could be saved. Because you sent Him to die in my place, I stand before you with confidence, knowing You love me and are ready to help me. I have been having a hard time at work, but I know You will make a way for me. YOu said in your word never have the righteous been forsaken and I am trusting in You for that. You said that You would go before me and make straight my paths. YOu said I could trust in you in all things and you wouldn’t ever fail me. I am giving you this situation in the name of Jesus” and guess what… He hears! My point is not to debate with you here. Its just, I want you to experience answered prayer just as much as I have. The Lord has not failed me yet. He healed me from a chronic illness. How can that be explained? Crohn’s is life-long and there is no cure. I went from being sick all the time (im talking, miserably sick) to completely symptom free. This came by reading the Word, praying it in faith, taking communion to receive the exchange of what JEsus did on the cross for me… to an answered prayer! Still praying for you my friend. God bless!
Fascinating blog, Daniel. I recently created my own blog, “The Spiritual Life of An Atheist” (at http://sannejohnson.wordpress.com) to address the very need you identify here– “Constructive Atheism Which Meets Needs For Which People Now Turn To Religion To Meet.” To my mind, this is a huge hole in atheist activism. For a spiritually minded atheist, you pretty much have to hew your own path. So I thought I would share my hard-earned knowledge in doing so.
Thanks, SA! I look forward to keeping tabs with your new blog and hopefully seeing you around the CWH comments sections in the near future!
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