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 …

Know Thyself

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 …

Beauty Is All the Power We Should Wield in the World.

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 …

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 …

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, …

Aristotle on Virtue

Virtue too is distinguished into kinds in accordance with this difference; for we say that some of the virtues are intellectual and others moral, philosophical wisdom and understanding and [prudence] being intellectual, liberality and temperance moral.” (Book I, Chapter 13, 1103a 4-7) “The wise individual personifies,” Daniel said, “the intellectual virtues, whereas the self-restrained, moderate …

Frankenstein’s Creature

The monster tells him of the horrors of alienation and isolation as he unintentionally scared men, women, and children. He tells Frankenstein of one family whom he had admired and tried to gain their love. The creature found a space on the side of the house that was hidden from sight. There he listened and …

Aristotle on Friendship

“[Friendship] is a virtue or implies virtue, and is besides most necessary with a view of living. For without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods; even rich men and those in possession of office and of dominating power are thought to opportunity of beneficence, which is exercised chiefly …

Aristotle’s Eudaimonia (Happiness)

Happiness [Eudaimonia] above all else seems to be of this character, or we always choose it on the account of itself and never on account of something else.” (Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins, Book I, Chapter 7, 1097b 0-1) The English word “happiness” here,” John said, “doesn’t get to what the Greek definition …

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 …