It can be said that, in its fragility, the last in the sense of the last flash of something remains for us as a claim even after it passes. Such is its power. Entitled “The Last God” (»Der letze Gott«), the penultimate chapter of Heidegger’s posthumously-published Contributions to Philosophy opens with a reflection similar to…
Category: Religion?
Pasolini and the Politics of the Sacred
Deleuze writes that “[a] close-up does not tear away its object from a set […] of which it would be a part, but on the contrary it abstracts it from all spatio-temporal co-ordinates, that is to say it raises it to the state of Entity.”(⊕) Think e.g. on the close-up of a face, which are,…
If God Loves You, It Means He Is Your Enemy: On Savage Thought and Christian Non-Sense
I. On Different Types of Oneness – and Their Danger Christian universalism is epitomised in these two passages extracted from two of Paul’s letters: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal…
Dionysos and Apollo
I Dionysos and Apollo Dionysos and Apollo shared one sanctuary: Delphi, located on a ridge of the Parnassos mountains overlooking the Valley of Phokis and the surrounding hills, near the town of Krissa north of the Gulf of Corinth in today’s region of Sterea or Central Greece. Dionysos was worshiped there in the winter, whereas…
Is the Earth Round?
“The earth is round.” It would be possible to contest this commonplace affirmation and to claim that the earth is flat instead, like a disc. Yet today almost nobody would contest the fact that the earth is round. Still, if it may be true that the earth is round, it is not clear whether the…
Endemic Pandemic Pandemonium
A devastating plague dominates Thebes. Sophocles (Oedipus Rex, first intervention of the chorus, vv. 158-215) has its people call on the gods: First we call on Athena, deathless daughter of Zeus, / and Artemis, earth upholder, […] / and Phoebus [Apollo], the far shooter, / come to us now […] / Our sorrows defy number;…
Heraclitus
As we have seen elsewhere, experiencing the gods in Ancient Greece amounted to experiencing the ever-living within the ephemeral, hence the immanence of the sacred, its presence here and now. And we also know that, in this context, the poet is, to paraphrase Hölderlin, the priest of the immortal gods – s/he who sings their…
Of Poetry, Gods, Heroes & Mortal Things
The Greek gods are a matter of poetry. First, we know of them through the verses of various Ancient Greek poets; eventually poet-philosophers, but poets in any event. Secondly, their very presence – ultimately, their very being – makes sense in poetic terms alone. In other words: talking of the gods meant in Ancient Greece…