Creatively Advancing into Novelty
“The Odyssey, from Greek mythology, is the classic Western saga, so much so that now we use the word “odyssey” to describe all significant human journeys. A religious myth is not something that is not true. Although it may not be true in particular, it is overwhelmingly true in general. Even the ancients knew…
[Walter Benjamin’s]…idea is that criticism does not stand outside the work of art, but stands alongside, maybe even inside, the work of art, participating in the work in order to further express and tease out what the artist already put there. In this theory of criticism, we don’t need the critic to tell us what…
Ricoeur’s analysis of imagination’s role of the metaphorical play of language leads him to the ontological paradox of creation-as-discovery. ‘Through the recovery of the capacity of language to create and recreate, we discover reality itself in the process of being created…Language in the making celebrates reality in the making.’ Ricoeur can thus conclude that ‘the…
The Tetrapharmakos, or, “The four-part cure,” is the Greek philosopher Epicurus’ remedy for leading the happiest possible life. The “tetrapharmakos” was originally a compound of four drugs (wax, tallow, pitch and resin); the word has been used metaphorically by Epicurus and his disciples to refer to the four remedies for healing the soul. The Four-Part…
The best individual, as conceived by Aristotle, is a very different person from the Christan saint. He should have proper pride, and not underestimate his own merits. He should despise whoever deserves to be despised. The description of the proud or magnanimous man is very interesting as showing the difference between pagan and Christian ethics,…
Poster via dead-philosophers.com
Another Language Recently another language has grown up within the one others use. The new language has a special way: it avoids saying obvious things as if they are not so obvious; it never proclaims something that the kind of person being addressed is presumed to know already; it courteously gives credit to the needs…
We have three dominant classes in contemporary America: We have the poor and outcast… We have a slipping working class that considers itself middle class. And we have powerful, and often greedy, Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats. Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats dominate our political, economic and cultural systems. Powerful words tweeted by…
“…even if I were to possess all knowledge, without love I would be nothing, is not simple that with love, I am ‘something’—in love, I am also nothing but, as it were, a Nothing humbly aware of itself, a Nothing paradoxically made rich through the very awareness of its lack. Only a lacking, vulnerable being…
This is sometimes called present bias – being unable to grasp what you want will change over time, and what you want now isn’t the same thing you will want later. Present bias explains why you buy lettuce and bananas only to throw them out later when you forget to eat them. This is why…