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The Horseshoe Roundup

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On Tuesday, April 2nd, 12% of Peoria (a whopping 18.65% of registered voters) decided the five available At-Large seats for Peoria City Council. The winners: Dr. Rita Ali (24.88%), John “Growth™” Kelly (12.06%), Zach Oyler (11.85%), Beth Jensen (11.43%), and Sid Ruckriegel (11.26%). Just at the outset, millennial Andre W. Allen1 (10.63%) lost by a mere 408 votes, proving himself as a natural political contender in future local races. My own personal favorite, Peter Kobak, came in 7th with 7.74% of the vote– nearly 3,000 votes behind taking 5th from Ruckriegal.

Dr. Ali had this election in the bag before even the primary. Her tactic of bringing a posse to each candidate forum (15-20 of her supporters clearly wearing Vote Ali attire) should be copied by candidates in future elections. She carried nearly a quarter of all votes in the general and ran on the slogan “Put 5 on it”, encouraging her supporters, and specifically her supporters in the black community, to give her all 5 votes. This, of course, is because of Peoria’s peculiar way of voting for At-Large council members: cumulative voting. If five seats are available, then voters are allowed to vote for five candidates… or, give one candidate 5 votes.2

At one point, several commentators (myself included) suggested Dr. Ali supporters maybe only put two and a half on it, after she conquered the primaries. Had this occurred, Dr. Ali likely would have remained in the number one spot with 12.44%. If the other half of these votes were split equally between Allen and Kobak, they would be on City Council with 16.85% and 13.96% respectively. But, one can hardly blame Dr. Ali for getting on City Council with such a perspicacious presence. If anything, Dr. Ali schooled the other candidates on how to come correct when one is required to run using cumulative voting.

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On Heidegger’s Aletheiology: A Response to Tugendhat

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Heidegger’s theory of truth is one of the most complex in his philosophy, yet it is also one of the most important. Only recently has his understanding of truth been illustrated in greater detail through the publications of his numerous lecture courses. Heidegger states that the primordial origins of truth are to be found not in the correspondence of subject and object, but in the concept of uncovering, in the sense of the Greek word aletheia. Heidegger contends that the truth of a being is uncovered from out of its hiddenness when it is asserted. However, because Dasein (the ontologically neutral term for a human) is finite, any entity which is uncovered will still be partially covered and remain unavailable to Dasein… (view more)

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Nietzsche and The Problem of Knowledge

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Of all the clever “knowing” beasts which have existed on the planet Earth, one stands out above the rest, not for his “knowing”, but for his “unknowing”. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche stood tall among great thinkers. It was Nietzsche who saw the dam of knowledge becoming too full and released the floodgates, creating room for life, not knowledge, to be filled in humanity. Nietzsche shows how humanity has lost its natural inclinations by following Socratic dialectic and believing in the mystery of the thing in-itself. It is the belief that humanity’s knowledge is absolute and eternal which Nietzsche attempts to discard. Nietzsche’s thought is a recoiling away from the thing in-itself of “meta”-physics, back to the immediate of appearance and impulses. Nietzsche is not concerned with the timeless concept of Being… (view more)

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Overcoming Nihilism

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This essay will show that Nietzsche overcomes nihilism with the “Philosopher of the Future.” It will explain nihilism from Christianity through modernity by critiquing them. It will explain the concept of pity and the consequences of the Death of God. The essay will then explore Nietzsche’s solution to humanity’s nihilism in the idea of the “Philosopher of the Future.” The “Philosopher of the Future” is the most radical thinker… (view more)

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Nietzsche’s Down Going

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Martin Heidegger makes the claim in the essay “Word of Nietzsche: God is Dead” that Nietzsche’s thought is nihilistic. Heidegger understands Nietzsche’s idea of will to power as essentially the same as the Being of Western metaphysics. Both Nietzsche and Heidegger see Occidental thought as fundamentally nihilistic in that it has posited a non-sensuous, other world which is the transcendental basis for existence. I wish to defend Nietzsche by showing that while certain aspects of Nietzsche’s early thought was nihilistic, his later thought overcomes this nihilism through a process called “down going”… (view more)

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Beyond Concepts

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This essay will explain Hegel’s dialectic method and then, proceed to explain his understanding of the Concept and its inherent relation to difference as opposition or contradiction. Then, Deleuze will be introduced who will posit that Ideas, not concepts, should be used to describe what he calls “the multiplicity of intuition.” Deleuze will present a form of difference which is not based on opposition but is instead a fundamental condition for ontology… (view more)

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Philosophical Foundations for Race

In this paper, I will describe how the concept “race” was formed starting in the early 17th century. First, I will briefly explain what race is and what it is not. Then, I will look at the connections between white privilege and Lockean theories of property in the 17th century. Next, I will look at Kant and his theories regarding a biological conception of race, as well as the effects circumscribed into law and society. Finally, I will analyze J.S. Mill’s ideas concerning colonization and the current impacts on society. While this paper will analyze thinkers outside of an American context, I will be describing race from an American viewpoint… (view more)

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