How did the Greeks come to be the first to have the means to examine themselves? First, their religion. Their gods where just greater versions of themselves that still felt the pull to power and temptation. Furthermore, the Oracle of Delphi didn't answer epistemological questions, but mostly about harvest and war. However, at the Temple … Continue reading How the Greeks Invented Philosophy
As a hopeful agnostic, who refuses to take the leap of faith, I am unwilling to have this theological form of agape based on the belief of something alien to me. However, there is this agape, or love of mankind, in my chest, because of the dignity in mankind. Sometimes it's hard to see it … Continue reading The Dignity In Mankind
The Greek language comes out with another word for love. It is the word agape. …agape is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it’s what theologians would call the love of God working in the lives of … Continue reading On Agape by Martin Luther King Jr
Alone in his flat, flashes of memories flooded his cave of creativity. He closes his eyes and imagined what it must be like to be an atom or quark with some sort of fundamental consciousness as it travels through space and time. Lost in the thought of passing particles crashing and colliding, then thoughts of … Continue reading Know Thyself
Leonardo DaVinci's dying last words were, "I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have." What he strived for his entire life, and believed never to be achieved, was the pure symmetry of the ancient Greeks.
Don’t you see that is how people must be shaken out of their dogmas? We’re like fish in water, never knowing what water is like, that it is wet. Something must force one out of the water, kicking and screaming, until that being finds what water is like, what they are like, and what the … Continue reading Beauty Is All the Power We Should Wield in the World.
Friedrich Schiller, In his Aesthetic Education of Man, writes that, “Man is never so authentically himself as when at play." Play is what we do to be free. The chief source of play is through the productions of art. Take a fly fisherman for example. His attention focuses, time is arrested, and he can stave … Continue reading The Idea of Play
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a German philosopher who was born and lived in Königsberg, Prussia. He grew up in a Lutheran Protestant household that focused on the literal interpretation of the Bible. This religious upbringing is taught through the lens of humility and devotion. He enrolled into the University of Königsberg at the age of … Continue reading Immanuel Kant: The Critique of Pure Reason
When we're young of age we begin to take in information from our parents without question. It's the principle of credulity we cling to as a child. We believe everything. As we get older, with the bricks of knowledge we've already laid to construct a foundation, we strengthen our beliefs with friendly facts. The wall … Continue reading The Brick Wall Effect
Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), a Victorian poet, completed his In Memoriam in 1849 where he wrestled with the contradictions between the idea of a providential god with the evolutionary and materialistic science of the day after the death of his best friend. The poem is divided into 133 cantos. He was son to a clergy … Continue reading Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H.
"The stakes of philosophy are often high. How we answer the three fundamental problems of philosophy: the problem of knowledge, conduct, and governance governs our way of life for those that live according to their own philosophy. Aristotle began his treatise titled Metaphysics with this: All men by nature desire to know. An indication of … Continue reading Thomas Reid: Common Sense (revised)
What kind of fabric is reality woven from? I remember my youth reading a physics book by Brian Greene who popularized string theory with its many and varied dimensions, and the super-cooled higgs field that was the precondition for the big bang. My early mind was shaped by science. However, once I made contact with … Continue reading Pan Psychism’s Fitness
What it means to be human is to have a set of limitations and potentialities and somewhere therein our short life is rooted. In there the trials and tribulations of social life happens. With social life language evolved. This natural language, of which all other artificially contrived languages arise from, comes in the form … Continue reading All Too Human
On freewill and determinism, Voltaire wrote: “It would be very singular that all nature, all the planets, should obey fixed eternal laws, and that there should be a little animal five feet high, who, in contempt of these laws, could act as he pleased, solely according to his caprice.” This captures the enlightenment's thoughts and … Continue reading Freewill and Determinism
In the beginning was the logos, the reason for it all… In the vast, emptiness of space, arose a single point, a divine soul which named itself Chaos. It contemplated for eons in solitude. However, once Chaos opened its onyx eyes, only to realize and see the wonderment of it all, it felt the pull … Continue reading In the Beginning (Cosmology)
