Le Premier État
  • Contact
  • Meet
  • Videos
  • Coaching & Consulting
Le Premier État An Underground Salon for Aristocrats of Spirit
January 29, 2023
Deducing Beauty: Beauty and Human Perfection in Schiller’s Aesthetic Letters

Deducing Beauty: Beauty and Human Perfection in Schiller’s Aesthetic Letters

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 …

January 5, 2023
Cultivating Beauty: Schiller on the Political Effects of Art

Cultivating Beauty: Schiller on the Political Effects of Art

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 …

August 30, 2022
Escaping the Net: How Our Media Environment Poisons the Life of the Mind

Escaping the Net: How Our Media Environment Poisons the Life of the Mind

“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 …

August 15, 2022
Playing with the Sky: The Decans (or the Phenomenology of the Faces of Heaven)

Playing with the Sky: The Decans (or the Phenomenology of the Faces of Heaven)

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 …

July 19, 2022
Aristotelian Eudaimonia: The Strange Virtue of the Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotelian Eudaimonia: The Strange Virtue of the Nicomachean Ethics

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, …

June 24, 2022
Performing the Zodiacal Drama: Bounds, Limits, and Particularization

Performing the Zodiacal Drama: Bounds, Limits, and Particularization

“As we know, it is also mistaken to limit the ‘freedom’ of interpretive choice to externals and marginal phenomena rather than think of the whole performance in a way that is both bound and free”—Gadamer, Truth and Method. (Emphasis Mine). Introduction The bounds (ὁρία) are an important yet perplexing form of rulership in traditional astrology. …

June 2, 2022
The Logic of the Triplicity Lords: A Dialectical Account of the Astrological Triads

The Logic of the Triplicity Lords: A Dialectical Account of the Astrological Triads

“Hegel came to connect dialectic with the triad, or with triplicity”—Findlay, Hegel: A Re-examination. Triplicity rulership is a form of planetary jurisdiction in ancient astrology. As the name suggests, instead of a single planet presiding over a given domain (as house and exaltation rulers do), triplicity rulers come in groups of three, and these three …

May 25, 2022
The Phenomenology of Exaltation: An Exploration of Elevated Planetary Powers in Traditional Astrology

The Phenomenology of Exaltation: An Exploration of Elevated Planetary Powers in Traditional Astrology

Exaltation (ὕψωμα) is a form of planetary rulership (δεσπότης) in ancient astrology. Like the standard house (οἶκος) rulerships encoded in the Thema Mundi, exaltations were thought to be locations where planets flourished. However, unlike standard house rulership wherein every planet apart from the luminaries is given to two signs, in the exaltation schema, each planet …

May 25, 2022
The Grounds of Sect in Traditional Astrology: A Philosophical Account

The Grounds of Sect in Traditional Astrology: A Philosophical Account

Sect (αἵρεσις) is a crucial concept in Hellenistic astrology, forging a fundamental contrast between two groups of planets. One group, the diurnal, is led by the Sun and contains Jupiter as a benefic and Saturn as a malefic. The other, the nocturnal, is led by the Moon and contains Venus and Mars respectively as its …

May 14, 2022
Socrates and the Limits of Love: The Erotic Philosophy of Plato’s Symposium

Socrates and the Limits of Love: The Erotic Philosophy of Plato’s Symposium

Plato’s Symposium is a philosophical exploration of the nature and function of erotic love. Apropos the subject matter, the dialogue begins in confusion. The dialogue proper occurs between Apollodorus, someone so obsessed with Socrates that he has been given the nickname “the maniac” (173d), and an unnamed friend of his. Apollodorus recounts a story he …

Posts navigation

Older Posts
© 2023 Le Premier État | Powered by Outstandingthemes