Platonic Dualism Although Plato is a major figure in the history of philosophy and a comparatively large number of his works have been preserved, it is important to place him in his proper historical context in order to address certain elements of h Continue Reading...
Scandal in Philosophy In Soccio's account of Immanuel Kant's philosophy, Immanuel Kant saw as a "Scandal in Philosophy" the basic disjunction between western philosophical schools, such that indicated both sides were in part mistaken about their pr Continue Reading...
Aristotle began as the student of Plato, but a reader is hard pressed to find any particular similarities between the worldviews of the two. In fact, if we have studied Platonic Dualism and Plato's accompanying Theory of Forms, it starts to look like Continue Reading...
Evelyn Underhill: Mystics of the Church Evelyn Underhill was a prolific writer of some thirty-nine published books and more than three hundred and fifty articles and reviews who wrote about mysticism in her early years and about the spiritual life o Continue Reading...
" (Kundera: 60) at this point, a strong connection between body and soul is forged. Her mother is unwell, and Tereza wants to visit her. However, Tomas opposes this trip so she does not go. Tereza falls in the street hours later and injures herself. Continue Reading...
However, with the conversion of Constantine, the idea of dualism meaning the separation of the state and church was not necessarily valid any more. More precisely, "before the conversion of Constantine there was no question about the relations of ec Continue Reading...
Human Nature Book Summary Jeeves, Malcolm. (Editor) From Cells to Souls -- and Beyond. New York: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004. According to Michael Steel in the book edited Malcolm Jeeves entitled From Cells to Souls -- and Beyond, the Continue Reading...
But the real world was a whole and perfect entity." (Philosophy Is a Way of Life) The theory of dualism and its implications in term ethics and politics can be derived from the following concise but insightful analysis. A dualistic view of reality Continue Reading...
In other words, like Plato, the body is inferior and its substance is irrelevant for true and certain knowledge. The intellect with its faculties (judgment, imagination, memory, free will, etc.) is most important. The sixth meditation is the crucia Continue Reading...
82). Therefore, Orgien suggest that, "To be is to participate in him who is" and this participation is facilitated through prayer. In terms of the benefits of prayer Origen refers to aspects such as inner peace, the prevention of sins and the promo Continue Reading...
It is only through occult understanding that the forms and the archetypal images and symbols can be interpreted. Here we see that the term unconsciousness is very similar to the Platonic ideals and forms. Another aspect that will form part of the t Continue Reading...
Republic, Plato's allegory of the cave is included as a way of describing the path from ignorance to enlightenment. Plato describes a group of people chained inside a cave, who cannot see anything except for the shadows cast on the wall in front of Continue Reading...
..from sin by keeping the soul unspotted from the world." Meantime, Platonic scholar Paul Elmer More, in his book The Religion of Plato, develops the idea that at the very heart of Plato's philosophy is a "moral dualism" (there is a higher soul, the Continue Reading...
Mind-body debate is central to the philosophy of consciousness. Two of the most significant philosophers to specialize in the analysis of the mind-body relationship are Nicolas Malebranche, a French Cartesian dualist, and Gottfried Liebniz, a German Continue Reading...
Human Beings Make Sense of Things In the early-1900s, Edmund Husserl sought to provide psychology with a truly scientific basis, not by copying the physical sciences but through the description of conscious experiences. This would be a truly humani Continue Reading...
Initially St. Augustine favoured the dualistic view that evil was external and separate from the world and mankind that in evident from the Manichean worldview. However, he was later to reject this strict dualism and taker another view of the natur Continue Reading...
Plato's Phaedo and STC's "Christabel" In Phaedo 80ff, Socrates outlines Plato's theory of Forms, particularly attempting to prove that the eternal Forms are of divine origin. Through analogy with the living body and the dead body, Socrates in dialog Continue Reading...
The material cause refers to that substance out of which a thing is constructed. The formal cause is the idea of the thing in the mind of the creator who sets about creating that particular thing. The efficient cause is the Agent - or the being that Continue Reading...
Gnosticism Early Christian polemicists such as Clement of Alexandria, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyons, and Tertullian all attacked Gnosticism as 'heresy' and until the 20th Century virtually nothing was known about it except in the distorted texts Continue Reading...
Wittgenstein Ludwig Wittgenstein is particularly interesting because in Philosophical Investigations (PI) he repudiated all of his earlier work in logical positivism and the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP), along with much of what was tradition Continue Reading...
Metaphysics presumes some kind of perfection somewhere, but there is no reason to presume this. Further, it presumes free will in the capacity to strive for the ideal. But Nietzsche writes, "Becoming is robbed of its innocence when any particular co Continue Reading...
However, many times, viewing an object in relation to other objects does indeed transcend the permanence of the meaning and create new meaning. Therefore, our knowledge of what we are convinced is real can change, which highlights the question of wh Continue Reading...
