Tagged: Plato

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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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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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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.

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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)

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The Truth and its Shadow: Rise of Superficial Intelligence

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

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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.

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Basic Notions of Metaphysics: the Being

Back to philosophy. In this podcast we investigate probably the most fundamental notion of philosophy: that of Being. We base our disscussion on original Parmenides' disclosure of Being and its congeniality with thinking and the truth. Also we point out some historically important notions of Being, both those that follow and those that deviate from this ancient insight of the "path of true inquiry" as Parmenides called it.

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One Eyed Men: Metapolitics and Metaphysics

In this podcast we focus on some notable qualities of our contemporary politico-philosophical prophets and their misconceptions. We argue that there indeed are few notable, yet quite unsavory, thinkers who correctly read the signs of the times, which gives them a significant edge over their opponents. However, their philosophical notions are based on - radically wrong - understanding of metaphysics as metapolitics.