In the Ending of the Year
A poignant yet for this reason truly merry Christmas to all KT readers courtesy of Mihai Marinescu
Category: Essay
Re-enchantment of the world: The state of amnesia, Part 2
In the second part of his series of essays, Mihai puts forward one of the most important subjects one could think of, although it occurs surprisingly rarely: that of memory and the struggle between oblivion and recollection. In the Christian Tradition the faculty of memory is being traditionally understood as a sort of backdoor for the divine influence - aptly so, because we tend to forget about having it throughout our daily lives - and "thief in the night" rarely enters the house through the front door. Mihai draws our attention to some traditional notions about memory as such and the nature of its object and then proceed to explain why the proper use of this faculty is essential for overcoming the perils posed by essential flaws in human nature.
The Word of Old: Tradition, Revelation and the Impossibility of Revolution (pt. 2)
We present second part in the series on relationship of Christianity and high culture of antiquity, summarized in the notion of the palaios logos. Here, by interpreting one remarkable passage from Origen's classical apologetic work Contra Celsum, we draw some distinctions in understanding of time, knowledge of future, human conscience and the relationship of God to man that are unique for Christianity. Our inquiry leads us before the specific problem - a pitfall most characteristic of our own age: human urge to posses the knowledge of the future, which will be treated in detail in the third part of the series.
Re-enchantment of the World, Part 1: A Feeling of Claustrophobia
In the first part of the series of essays Mihai provides us with a unique approach to a unique pathway to knowledge - symbolism. While the use of symbol as such is not unknown to our day and age, Kali Tribune's Ministry of Metaphysical Discernment, Semiology and Apophatic Affairs will aptly demonstrate just what level of difference there is between what modernity and Tradition understand as symbol.
An Incommunicable Given, Pt. 1
It is often said that dignity of person is in itself the greatest moral "given"; that person is "a purpose unto itself" (Kant); that it is inviolable "given" of humanity. And so on and so forth, from the popular moralizing to the real basis of legislature, this perpetually used, yet rarely pondered upon notion strikes us as something that should be the most comprehensible and closest thing to our minds, but, on closer inspection, it is hard to be sure where it really stems from and how we came to understand it as a self evident "given". In this two parts essay we'll inquire about the origin of this "given" in the singular event in history when, quite literary, the "given" was handed to us, while employing help of our regular assortment of traditional authorities. In the first part we treat metaphysics that can prepare the mind for the approach to the heart of the matter, beyond the subject/object split, but that can nevertheless take us only one part of the way. Also we juxtapose the traditional understanding of the relationship of intellect and being against Immanuel Kant's idea of "transcendental philosophy", which could be understood as an epitome of all attacks on metaphysics, by metaphysics, in modernity.
Casual Malificence
On principle we don't speculate about the obvious crisis de jour. But, then again, why let the good crisis go to waste? In her short, but poignant, reflection on the reaction of a doomsday cultist, whose cult lost the undue attention it had literary over night, Deirdre makes the point we should keep in mind.
Miscellanea: The Fractured Mirror
We continue our regular Miscellanea series with an opening passage of Aristotle's Metaphysics and ask: what knowledge is the good knowledge and why Science Fiction could very well serve as the modern compensation for the lack of it.
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.
New Times, Ancient Shadows
KT returns to roots - once more you can have no less than 14 pages of essay or 50 minutes podcast. Yet we also return to our old subjects, this time around the metaphysics of Chaos and the influence it performs on our minds. We inspect the idea that just could be lurking behind the set of postmodern projects related to indifference and dissolution of genders - the idea of the androgyny of God. Throughout the essay, we address the inadequacy of modern conservative thought when confronted with what are in fact a historically ancient ideas and principles driving the postmodern project; we employ the aid of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Gregory Nazianzen to explain why the Word of God has Father only and much more.
