“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 …