I recently read Philip Goff’s delightful little manifesto for panpsychism, Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness. Goff wrote this work for the non-specialist and admirably condenses the key debates in the analytic philosophy of mind to their essentials. He does this to explain and motivate an emerging position which would have been …
“Falling Towers/ Jerusalem Athens Alexandria/ Vienna London/ Unreal”—T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland. The Tower has the reputation of being one of the most ominous cards in the tarot. In Rider-Waite-Smith iconography, the card depicts a stone tower ablaze, its crown struck down and two of its inhabitants plummeting from its desolate heights. The card’s black background …
As noted in my previous post, the Buddha is said to have articulated a middle path between the extremes of sensual indulgence and extreme asceticism. Rather than abandoning oneself to lower pleasures or mortifying one’s body by starving the flesh, Buddhists practice tranquil meditation. Advocates of the Buddha’s middle way claim that “It gives vision, …
To many, Buddhism appears to be more a philosophy than a religion. For, unlike other religions that articulate doctrines of God and how to properly worship him, Buddhism is relatively unconcerned with deities.[1] Likewise, whereas other religions deify their founders or treat them as prophets uniquely connected to the divine, Buddhists claim that their message, …
Viktor Frankl is known both for surviving the horrors of the concentration camps of World War II and for developing a psychotherapeutic framework he dubbed logotherapy. Often referred to as the Third Viennese School, this framework departs from previous approaches to psychoanalysis by appealing to the centrality of the search for meaning in human life. …
Thanks to the legacy of Bernays and his proteges, our culture continues to be permeated by a broadly existentialist view of human nature, a view in which the universe is valueless apart from human consciousness.[1] Value is instead created, on this picture, by individual human subjects attempting to come to terms with an indifferent cosmos; …
After spending enough time with graduate students and ‘professional’ philosophers, one is bound to come across the sad story. The sad story is usually told while intoxicated and with a sense of embarrassing nostalgia, as if admitting to having once been devastated upon learning that there was no Santa Claus. The story admits to multiple …
Purported miracles and the testimonies concerning them are essential to many religious traditions. They can not only define a religion’s conceptual content, but can also serve as evidence for that content. For example, consider the following early Christian credal formulation recited by St. Paul: “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached …
In my last post, I examined René Guénon’s account of the Crisis of the Modern World. I will now examine an interesting response to his account set forth by his student Julius Evola. Whereas Guénon held out some hope for the survival of the West, Evola offers none.[1] Evola believes that the forces of dissolution …
There is little doubt today that the Western world is in crisis. Regardless of where one falls on the political or theological spectrum, one has the sense that our culture is collapsing. Philosophers argue about the intellectual and historical roots of this crisis (e.g. the emergence of nominalism, the enlightenment, capitalism, Marxism, the religious right, …