“Brhaspati! When they set in motion the first beginning of speech, giving names, their most pure and perfectly guarded secret was revealed through love. When the wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve, then friends recognized their friendships. A good sign was placed on their speech. …
“Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind cannot bear very much reality” (T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton). “By this radiance, my child, I swear, by this bright orb which sees and hears us now, that from this being which you now behold, and which rules the world, you have your origin, child of the Sun!” …
The history of Western philosophy is often portrayed as beginning with the work of Thales and the so called “Milesian school” he inaugurated.1 Because he stands, on such accounts, as the fountainhead of our philosophical tradition, his thought has come to be imbued with a mythological significance. In a sense, this should not be surprising, …
A peculiar self-congratulatory narrative runs throughout contemporary accounts of the history of Western philosophy. According to this narrative, philosophy is, by its very nature, co-extensive with a process of demytholigization. Whereas Greek poets attempted to explain the world mythologically by invoking the unseen operations of gods and spiritual forces, Greek philosophy, on this account, was …
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself, / and what I assume you shall assume, / for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”–Walt Whitman, Song of Myself. 1. The Call of Hesiod Our knowledge of ancient Greek theology is, to a large extent, mediated by the mind of Hesiod, the eighth century …
As I have argued in a previous essay,1 Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man seeks to establish the necessity of beauty for human life by offering two kinds of argument. The first argument turns on the salutary political effects of beauty, and the second on the concept of beauty itself, arguing that it …
True to its title, Friedrich Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man examines beauty’s role in individual and cultural development. At its most general level, the Aesthetic Letters investigates two key questions: (1) What is beauty? (2) And what are its effects on human life? Inspired by Kant, Schiller attempts to answer the first …
“But my eyes are toward you, O GOD, my Lord; in you I seek refuge; leave me not defenseless! Keep me from the trap that they have set laid for me and from the snares of evildoers! Let the wicked fall into their own nets, while I pass safely” (Psalm 141:8-10 ESV). Hegel, the famous …
The decans (or faces/ πρόσωπα) constitute an enigmatic form of rulership in ancient astrology. Rumored to have originated in Egypt,[1] the decans were associated with particular stars whose faces shone through the constellations, thus giving rise to their alternative designation as “faces.”[2] Yet, after the inception of Hellenistic astrology and the transition to a tropical …
In the classical world, human action was thought to transcend mere stimulus and response. While a captive dog might be conditioned to salivate at the ringing of a bell, genuinely human activity was held to be too rich to be reduced to such a model. Human activity, in contrast, is guided by reason, and so, …