How can 'I' or 'Ego' become the principle of everything that is? What is the relation of 'Ego' and system building, and why Immanuel Kant might be the most important thinker of modern age? Why and how is system repugnant to metaphysics? Those are the questions we'll try to answer in this episode.
In our day and age, the word "system" is as prevalent as it is ambivalent; moreover, bearing in mind that we are living in an epoch supposedly deprived of metaphysics, 'system' sometimes appears to be an ersatz formula for something that used to be a metaphysical notion. However, no age is free from metaphysics and 'system' is a metaphysical notion tailor made by modernity for modernity, and beyond. In this podcast we'll trace the genesis of the system principle and contrast it to traditional metaphysics, to which the system is as repugnant as it gets, although its very rarely perceived as such by contemporary historians and philosophers. In this episode we take an example of system building thinking from early German Idealism, from J.G. Fichte's Wissenschaftlehre.
The ease with which a number of popular contemporary conservatives identify ontology and politics of sustainable development (aka 'degrowth', 'The Great Reset', 'green politics', etc.) with Marxism and its derivations is comparable only to their ignorance of the original philosophical assumptions of Karl Marx and their roots in classical German philosophy; ignorance that, in a peculiar sense, appears so blatant that it seems almost wilful. To set the record straight, in the series of podcasts we'll outline the rift existing between these two, modern and postmodern, totalitarian projects, based on their root assumptions. In the first episode we sketch the basic propositions of Hegel's metaphysics that inspired Marx' project.
In this episode of our ongoing series "Basic Notions of Metaphysics", we talk about univocal concept of being as explicated by John Duns Scotus. It is hard to overestimate the influence of the idea that being is an univocal concept, that is: the simple, indivisible and, above all, indifferent notion present in all other concepts - from the spec of dust to God Himself. We argue that univocity represents the point of departure from traditional metaphysics towards modernity and postmodernity; whereas, traditionally, being was understood as reality or act/ἐνέργειᾰ, with univocity it becomes a concept and hence opens the horizon of modern metaphysics with its conceptual systems and reliance on subjectivity. Naturally, we on KT have few objections about that.
In this episode of our regular podcast Basic Notions of Metaphysics we provide an account on principle of analogy - a veritable sacred bond of the universe, according to Medieval scientia transcendens. We follow the genesis of this genuinely Christian transformation of the principle already partly known in the ancient world, its relevance in the context of the problem of mediation between equivocal and univocal predication of being, its roots in the doctrine of transcendentals and, ultimately, its nature as the form of the revelation of the presence of God in His creatures.
When talking about posthumanism and its intellectual dependencies the philosophical groundwork that made it possible often tends to be neglected. In this series we'll provide an incentive to reflect upon these presuppositions by outlining the implications present in the work of premiere philosopher of modernity, Immanuel Kant, that opened up the intellectual horizon for posthumanism. In the first part we focus on Kant's groundbreaking intuitions about the nature of consciousness and its constitutive role at the heart of reality itself as both irrevocable departure from pre-modern intellectuality and necessary condition for assumptions of contemporary posthumanism. We do this by giving a broad outline of Kant's arguments from the central part of his Critique of Pure Reason - "the transcendental deduction of the categories of pure reason". In the second part we'll sketch how posthumanists rely on Kantian understanding of subject/object split for building their utopian quasi metaphysics.
Our regular podcast spreading dark medieval lore, formerly known as wisdom, across the interwebs is back: in this episode of Basic Notions of Metaphysics we analyze classical Aristotle's notion of nature. As definition goes like this: "Nature is intrinsic principle of movement", we talk about what it means for something to be "intrinsic", "principle" and in "movement". We advertise one thing, provide you with three things and charge you with no-thing. Only on KT.
We usually point out how modern philosophy tends to invert traditional philosophical questions. So why not do it the other way around? In this podcast we examine the supposedly fundamental metaphysical question, as proposed by Martin Heidegger in his 1929 Freiburg lecture "Was ist Metaphysik?" and come to conclusion that it is not as "fundamental" as it seems.
To make up for the pain suffered by KT junkies because of the longest withdrawal in the history of this Europe spanning intellectual behemoth, KT Ministry of Non-Current Events and Putting Current Events out of Focus invited the head of our Carpathi-Black Sea division, Mihai Marinescu to join the General Secretary for the high level talks. Topis covered are Covid19 crisis and how we on the outskirts on Europe deal with it, peculiar developments in Western Europe, why the most progressive societies appear to be at the same the most progressive in limiting civil freedoms, why ideologies are in fact an attempt at political metaphysics, sexual politics as the crucial denkverbot for genuinely dissident minds, liberalism classical or otherwise, Aristotle's understanding of primordial duality of human being and Christian application of this fact, symbolism, Communism and much more.
