Kali Tribune

Tagged: Aristotle

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Knowledge / Podcast

Basic Notions of Metaphysics: Being and Having

Why does one forget so many things in the course of one's life? Why, on the other hand, the knowledge we retain has some peculiar, non-quantifiable, qualities to it? What it means to be in the know? These are the questions we'll try to answer in this podcast, by referring them to one all encompassing distinction - that between 'Being' and 'having being'. As always we begin with real life examples of the problem and in the course of discussion touch upon the important subject of personal identity, i.e. we denounce the error of identifying the person with the consciousness, an error that becomes quite apparent when reflecting on act of sleep and of having dreams. Also, we turn to our previous work on Nicholas of Cues' De Visione Dei to provide us with some aid in addressing the problem on the higher level, once we abandon the ground of everyday experience.

aristotel-metafizika 2

Knowledge / Podcast

Basic Notions of Metaphysics: What is Metaphysics Anyway?

After going through a number of metaphysical notions, now, prompted by reader's query, we finally try to answer the simple question: what is metaphysics? The very fact that one can talk about metaphysics for a long time without explicitly defining what it is gives us an important clue about this type of knowledge, more common that most people think. We sum up some of the notions we expounded upon before and attempt to give definition of "science sought for" in both traditional sense and its modern, we would claim, misconception of the "system of science". Also we touch upon the possible reasons for shunning it by modern thinkers like adherents of "analytical" philosophy and say few words on technology and its latent metaphysical origin.

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Essay / Knowledge

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. 

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Essay / Knowledge

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.

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Essay / Miscellanea

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.

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Knowledge / Podcast

What it Means to be Historically Shallow

More or less every thinking man has at one point in his life uttered or at least heard the phrase "X is a-historical" or "Y is not in continuity with history". Admittedly, this doesn't apply to thinking middle aged children one must often deal with in the public sphere of our day, but the question still stands: what exactly do we mean when we claim that something is historically shallow?

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Knowledge / Podcast

Basic Notions of Metaphysics: Hypostasis and Person

We continue discussion of the basic notions of metaphysics with the outline of the profound reality beyond the word "hypostasis". We talk about the profound shift in the understanding that came to pass with the formation of the Christian Tradition on Incarnation and the birth of understanding of hypostasis as implicitly personal being. Also we give a brief outline of the significance of the notion of hypostasis as person to the development of what is usually misunderstood as the modern "discovery" of inviolability of person in both moral and legal terms.

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Knowledge / Podcast

Basic Notions of Metaphysics: A Pure Formality

In this podcast of the ongoing "Notions of Metaphysics" series we treat the problem of inverted meaning of traditional notions of metaphysics. We use the example of the complementary opposites of material and formal, something we today understand in precisely opposite way to their original meaning. Why this happens, what are the consequences and how does it influence our everyday life are some of the questions we rise in the course of the podcast.

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Knowledge / Podcast

In the Flesh

In this Christmas podcast we take a moderately deep dive into Christian understanding of the body and the senses, a peculiar and rarely recognized consequence of the Revelation which arguably created the deepest distinction between Christianity and the soil of the civilization it was implanted in to sprout into what we call a Christian civilization.