What is an idea? According to Peter A. Angeles’ Dictionary of Philosophy we have the following candidates: Idea: (Gk., idea, “concept,” “class,” “kind,” “idea,” “mode,” “sort,” “species,” “form,” “nature,” “from eidos, “visual appearance,” “form,” and idein, “to see,” “to grasp conceptually”). 1. Anything that is… Read more ›
The Danish proto-existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) put forth an intriguing account of the demonic in chapter 4 of his eccentric work The Concept of Anxiety (see the Princeton edition translated by the Hongs). Kierkegaard claims the demonic person has “anxiety about the… Read more ›
In the last post I defined the uncanny as follows: The uncanny is an unsettling, even terrifying, experience of the familiar suddenly becoming unfamiliar at the same time (or the unfamiliar suddenly becoming familiar at the same time). The experience… Read more ›
In Japanese aesthetics yūgen refers to those moments when we feel as if we have had a partial glimpse into a hidden reality. Such a glimpse is felt to be profoundly mysterious. It is also experienced as beautiful. According to… Read more ›
In his dialogue On Free Choice of the Will (Macmillan, 1964), St. Augustine (354-430 C.E.) argues that our minds can know truths that are eternal. For Augustine, something is eternal if it exists in a timeless, unchanging state. So eternal truths are unchanging… Read more ›
A note of caution: Plato wrote dialogues not treatises. These dialogues show the life of the philosophical mind at work: questioning, arguing, speculating, imagining, wondering, struggling, and understanding. They do not show finished results that we can confidently attribute to… Read more ›
In his book On the Soul, Aristotle gave the following definition of soul: “The soul is the first actuality of a natural body that is potentially alive” (412a27). This first actuality of the body is the immaterial form of the… Read more ›
Many of us think that virtue is connected with measure. Vice arises when people are excessive or deficient with regard to their emotions and actions. For example, a character disposition to get excessively angry at the wrong time, toward the… Read more ›
“Further, it will not be amiss to distinguish the three kinds and as it were grades of ambition in mankind. The first is of those who desire to extend their own power in their native country; which kind is vulgar… Read more ›
Agnes Martin, Falling Blue (1963) In his book Human, all too Human (Cambridge University Press, 1986), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) wrote: Without Melody: There are people who repose so steadily within themselves and whose capacities are balanced with one another so… Read more ›
A note of caution: the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 BCE) wrote dialogues not treatises. These dialogues show the life of the philosophical mind at work: questioning, arguing, speculating, imagining, wondering, struggling, and understanding. They do not show finished results… Read more ›
I suspect that anyone who writes on the subject of death has a moment when he or she wonders whether it is better to agree with the Zen monk Toko who, in his dying moment, tells us in a death… Read more ›