Kali Tribune

Tagged: Aristotle

2

Essay / Knowledge

The Word of Old: Tradition, Revelation and the Impossibility of Revolution (pt. 1)

It is said that “Christianity is against human nature”. Well, if you think that unspoken reason for saying this was originally: “because it prevents people of wanting to conquer and shag each other, thus at the same time deadening their more creative impulses”, you would be quite wrong. The original intellectual objections to Christianity came from people who denounced Christians for rejecting the palaios logos – “the word of old” – that is, ancient metaphysical tradition and civilization built around it, and thus ushering a sort of, what we would now call, a revolutionary new beginning. In this series of essays we’ll attempt to indicate not only how and why this was a fundamental misunderstanding, but how Christians who in turn unequivocally rejected the proverbial “Athens” for the sake of absolute – in fact: isolated – “Jerusalem” committed quite a congenial mistake.

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Knowledge / Podcast

Basic Notions of Metaphysics: Above and Below

In this podcast we talk about the traditional notion of Being and its unwarranted “deconstruction” by modern philosophers, premier among them being Martin Heidegger. As a starting point we take a passage from Boethius’ De Trinitate  on how Being can never be a subject or substrate and juxtapose it to Heidegger’s “phenomenological destruction of traditional ontology” which claims that Tradition does precisely the opposite. From there on we point out the importance of spacial metaphors in metaphysics, where what is “groundless” can mean both something below and something above. It is our contention that thinkers in the vein of Heidegger confuse this metaphysical above and below, and seek abyss where traditional thought sought heaven.

4

Analysis / Podcast

Autopsies

In this podcast we address once more the superficiality of intellectual content mediated on Internet and aptness of this medium for rejecting the depth of knowledge, while providing an illusion of its presence – something we, some time ago, expressed in Plato’s term of “shadow drawing” or skiagraphia.

2

Analysis / Podcast

Homosexuality and Identitarian Politics

 

Although we more than once expressed our views on homosexuality and ever present “mainstreaming” of it and other forms of sexuality gone awry, it was always in the context of other, more interesting subjects. Hereby, we put homosexuality into focus as a phenomenon of severe ontological deviation, based on the urge for identity and shunning of otherness; a  fundamental attitude of a man seeking escape from the different and unknown, yet sold to the masses as the precise opposite: a manifestation of freedom and experiment in experiencing difference.

In a word: contemporary image of homosexuality is a pure inversion, which is quite easy to demonstrate in less than half an hour talk.

2

Knowledge / Podcast

Power of Closed Mind

 “Open mindedness” … such a common place epithet. Yet, as with most common place epithets it conceals a more deeper cause within it. In this podcast we’ll shed some light on the fact that mind is by its very nature open and how this can become impediment when confronted with its ultimate opposite – systemic thinking; a veritable epitome of “closed mind”, encompassing phenomena from political correctness to Internet mediated intellectuality seemingly opposed to this prevailing ideology of our age. We attempt to demonstrate that conflict between the open and closed mind is in effect an activity of differentiating between Intellect and Ego as metaphysical realities. 

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Politics / Video

Elements of the Politics of Dissolution: On Destructive Purpose of Homosexual Marriage

Good deal of people used to wave off homosexual “marriage” as annoying but essentially harmless absurdity of our age, not so different from other excesses of indifferent freedom at the root of contemporary societies. However, is it really so? In this video we examine what the origin of political community (politeia) really is and point out that it is in fact directly, and quite obviously, subverted by the idea of “identiarian” or “homosexual marriage”; moreover, once understood, equating of normal and homosexual sexuality appears to be a direct and unequivocal strike at the root of communal life to such an extent that one has to wonder why so many ink has to be spilled arguing about something so strikingly obvious.

As is customary on KT, we employ the help of classical thinkers: we base our analysis on Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on Aristotle’s definition of origin of the society from the first book of his Politics.

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Knowledge / Podcast

Words and Time

Speaking about the origins of all is a daunting task, impossible by some accounts. However, speaking about the origins of speaking itself is, supposedly, quite doable. In this podcast we’ll put this assumption to the test. We focus on the temporal dimension of language in its original and deepest form, i.e. language as a tool of metaphysics, and claim that this dimension is the eternal past – that behind which we can never step, whether in thought or word. Consequently, we discuss subjects stemming from this insight: nature of Tradition, words of unknown origin but perfectly nuanced meaning, impossibility of fundamentally new beginnings, errors of modern philosophy, Science Fiction and enduring illusion of human creativity. (Paypalable bonus: you get to learn some Croatian in the process)

4

Knowledge / Podcast

Words, Bywords and Apparent Truths: Danger of Anachronisms and How to Combat Them

The problem of anachronisms is very well known, yet not seldom perpetuated, in the scholarly circles. Yet, what influence do they exercise on our every day living and do they solely represent the errors of academics?

In this podcast we address the pressing issue of conflating meanings of the words that give birth to the worst form of lie – apparent truth.

1

Knowledge / Podcast

Basic Notions of Metaphysics: Friendship

It can appear that having a buddy or two doesn’t make one all too metaphysical. Well, not according to Aristotle and with him, more or less, the whole of metaphysical tradition. Friendship – Philia – is an ontological mood disclosing far more than meets the eye, the fact that is all to eagerly forgotten in our day and age; and this forgetfulness of what lies in the background of the basic form of inter-human relations bear grave consequences – even as deprived as the choice of nothingness over Being. Join KT in taking a peek behind the veil of an average day in our average lives to glimpse not so average metaphysical and ethical abyss casually obscured by it.