FIRST PART HERE On Apollonian Temperance Γνῶθι σεαυτόν (gnothi seauton): “Know yourself.” These words connected to the Delphian Apollo are, above anything else, a recommendation about the assumption of one’s mortal condition, hence about the awareness of one’s limits against any ὕβρις (hybris, “excess”); thus too the Delphic lemma: Mηδὲν ἄγαν (meden agan), “Nothing in…
Category: Thought
We, Platonists (I)
We want to talk about Plato. Of Plato as a modern taboo. Hence also about ourselves. About Plato and us. But first we are going to talk about horses. About apparitions and sculptures. Otherwise – we fear – we would only be able to repeat commonplace views on Plato. And we have had enough of…
What Is Language?
Certainly not primarily a communication tool. Nor a particular subset of learned behaviour. Nor a cognitive outcome of human evolution. Nor a set of sentences whose truth value could be quantified. Nor a socially-agreed-upon system of sounds and written phonemic symbols or ideograms to which meaning would be conventionally attached too. Nor a disciplinary apparatus…
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…
Post-Nihilist Meanderings on the Shores of Mythology, Tragedy, Poetry, and Enigma
It wasn’t long. It only lasted four hundred years. But the beautiful thing is that we can assist to its birth and death. The beautiful thing and the sad thing. It first surfaces in Homer’s Iliad, and it dies with Aristotle, in Aristotle. Strangely, we can presence both events. Yet we can only understand the…
Oedipus Rex
Duplicity. “When Oedipus speaks he sometimes says something other than or even the opposite of what he thinks he is saying.” Yet “the ambiguity of what he says does not reflect a duplicity in his character, which is perfectly consistent, but, more profoundly, the duality of his being. He is double. He is himself a…
Pure Thought at the Speed of Light
It is possible to distinguish among two major linguistic functions: one denotative, the other one poetic. We have already touched upon the latter when talking about gods, heroes, and mortal things. The denotative is likewise essential to any living, as by naming things we manage to identify them. And this, moreover, is the basis on…
The Outside of Thought
It is not only that attempting to write while lacking a certain degree of sensitivity is not possible at all. But that writing is, we may say, a sensitivity event. Yet there is no sensitivity but towards the Other – for sameness moves, instead, to recognition. Now, showing sensitivity towards anything means to let it…