A Dialogue on Nietzsche’s Depth Psychology

It was September. This week Café metaphysics was to be held at the bar Soren and I use frequent. Sad memories lingered as I walk up the hill to its doors. Daedalus recalled The last time the entire group met there in our discussion on depth psychology in Greek tragedy. Daedalus then looked up in …

An Analysis of Matthew Arnold’s Literature and Science

Percy passed an essay on to Daedalus for him to read, but first he gave the setting in which it was created. Percy told him that it was addressed to the United States in 1883, in reply to Thomas H. Huxley's “Science and Culture," delivered in Birmingham on October 1st, 1880. Huxley was known as …

Darwin and the Descent of Man

Darwin and The Descent of Man Charles Darwin (1809-1882) went to the University of Edinburgh and Cambridge like his grandfather Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802). Erasmus became a good enough physician to tend to George III, and his most important scientific work was Zoonomia which explains pathology and hinted at the idea of evolution. While Charles Darwin …

Collingwood: The Idea of History

[H]istory is ‘for’ human self-knowledge. It is generally thought to be of importance to man that he should know himself; where knowing himself means knowing not his merely personal peculiarities, the things that distinguish him from other men, but his nature as man. Knowing yourself means knowing, first, what it is to be a man; …

How the Greeks Invented Philosophy

“How did Greece become the first civilization to have the means to examine themselves?” asked Soren. “Where they lived had a huge impact on the invention of philosophy. They had to trade with foreign people, with armies much larger than themselves, with gods that gave a different logos. They were continually shown their way of …

The Pure Symmetry of the Ancient Greeks

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.

Immanuel Kant: The Critique of Pure Reason (Rough Draft)

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 …

Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H.

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 …

Psychology and its Artistic Counterparts.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others, but of the three the only trustworthy one is the last. -JOHN RUSKIN The History of Venice, …

William Blake Unshackled

Romantic poet and painter William Blake (1757-1827). His Songs of Innocence and Experience were a contrast of the ordinary mechanistic world to the vibrant imaginative world which could see the world anew, perhaps even as it really is. He recognized man as struggling between the imaginative naivete' and the realism of what old age imposes …

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria

The Lyrical Ballads were written in 1798 as a joint project between Wordsworth and Coleridge. In 1800 Coleridge said the new preface, contains our joint opinions on Poetry however by 1802 things took a wrong turn and Coleridge proclaimed he knew Wordsworth better than he knew himself. Coleridge believed Wordsworth was brilliant, but as time …

The Lyrical Ballads: Wordsworth and Coleridge

The Lyrical Ballads, first published in 1798, were a collection of poems collected and collaborated by William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). This pair of writers made one feel and wonder in different ways. Coleridge would take the mysterious and wondrous, and bring them down to ordinary life. Wordsworth had the opposite effect, …

The Dawn of History

“Herodotus (484-425 BC), the father of history, wrote about the Persian war, which lasted from 499BC to 449BC. He went beyond the mere gathering of facts. He explained the Greek’s war against Persia by giving us multiple angles to view it by. Furthermore, myth and mores came secondary to his telling of facts. He did …