There’s something so inspiring and at the same time so adolescent like in the rebellion against the world, “West”, “rationality”, and other overwhelming terms of which we are only vaguely aware what they mean. In this Micellanea we contrast this absolutely modern, yet not seldom past oriented, mentality with the authentic voice from the past – one of St. Augustine of Hippo.
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)
To understand something “on the level of words” is fairly common phrase used to denote someone’s superficiality. However, there’s more depth to superficiality than initially meets the eye. In this podcast we’ll point out some of the depths of what we previously dubbed, in Plato’s phrase, skiagraphia or “shadow-drawing”; a mental equivalent of drawing the shadow of the image on plane surface to add to it the illusion of depth. We’ll point out, in our common “metaphysician next door” manner, how this attitude drives people to cut themselves off, not only from the realities of the world, but, more perniciously, of their very selves too.
So, it is a bit obsolete to wail and grumble about the dangers of supposed rise of the robotic Artificial Intelligence, when we are already dealing with the real and present danger of supremacy of the Superficial Intelligence
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.
Social justice and equality are enemies of the serious man and thus of all humanity. How and why, one might ask. Well, in our weekly miscellanea we’ll let Aristotle give us a hint.
A long winded discussion between yours truly and Deirdre of Luminar Podcast initiated by academic advocacy of infanticide or, as authors of 2012 article “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?” we use as the starting point call it: after-birth abortion.
However, and not surprisingly, this podcast covers much more than this peculiar form of high brow nihilism.
Discussion touches upon, among other things:
problem of person and the reality of soul, Christianity and paganism, Hegel and the philosophy of absolute subject, posthumanism, euthanasia, abortion and vulnerability of women, reaction from the Right, impossibility of traditionalist revolution and dangers stemming thereof, Thomas Aquinas, Plato, Aristotle, Anaxagoras, science and science fiction, Alexander Dugin, resurgence of history after its supposed end in liberal utopia, forgiveness, Down syndrome
and much, much more.
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.
In this podcast we inspect the differences between traditional and modern understanding of evil as metaphysical notion; we point out the crucial difference in mentality displayed by this differentiation – the one considering man’s place in the world.
It is customarily to take the traditional notion of Evil as corruption of Good, as naive, not realistic enough or plain childish.
We argue that this belief is a tell tale sign of modernity coming to blows with its historical ancestry, because this idea dawns only when attempt is being made to understand evil as a real, positive, principle, i.e. in itself, as opposed to trying to understand it on the basis of the reality of Good, whose privation it in fact is.
Through some examples, a bit of analysis and even an anecdote or two, we point out how dangerous, vain and wrong headed this belief is.
There’s a lot of talk on the political Right about the loss of “collective identity”. In this video we’ll use few passages from Rene Guenon’s “Reign of the Quantity and Signs of the Times” to demonstrate that this loss, if understood properly, is hardly something to be mourned. The exposition concerns metaphysical notions of “form”, “matter”, “quality”, “quantity” and dichotomy betwenn Uniqueness (unity) and uniformity that bear wide ranging implications and practically beg to be misunderstood by political radicals of the Right.
