hoffing and puffing

Welcome, and thanks for taking a look at my “hoffings and puffings.” My name is Bob Hoffert. I live in Colorado with my wife, Maureen. We have two adult daughters and a son (in-law). I was raised within a traditional Pennsylvania German family and community that gave me the secure foundation of love and a clear human identity. I have grown from a pietistic youth and early adulthood into a mature atheism. I’m retired from a professional life as a university professor of political philosophy and as a university administrator. Politically I am a Burkean conservative and a progressive liberal who has learned a lot from Nietzsche and Marx. But more than any particular theory or mish-mash of theories, I care about temperament. In particular, I respond most openly when our human limits are acknowledged not to excuse us from responsibility but to restrain us from presumption; when we appreciate how we have been beneficiaries of the work, wisdom, and nurturing care of family, neighbors, and the human community and adopt reciprocal roles in composing our lives; when we celebrate and prudently care for an evolving world that both in time and space is simultaneously more grandly majestic and more delicately intimate than anything we can fully comprehend; and when we jealously protect the personal liberty necessary for our moral accountability and our civic duties.