The coming of the Cosmos into being is not only a present-day scientific concern, but also a recurring object of thought. From the Babylonian Enuma Elish and numerous indigenous cosmogonies to the Big Bang theory in contemporary physics and Félix Guattari’s concept of Chamosmosis – to only mention a few examples – it has never…
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…
Giacometti’s Women
They are made of earth and rock. These women. The mountain’s skin. The waves of the ocean have sculpted them. They traced salty waters guiding their ships. Open. Bodies. They stand in fire becoming spirits. Burning matches. The space they share is a ghostly power… and sacrifice.
Those Who(se Bodies) Do Not Look Like Us
Early in the morning at the Pnyx, west of the Acropolis, Aristotle and Spinoza walk and chat on the eve of the Greater Eleusinian Mysteries… Aristotle: “But don’t we say that the body is defined in two ways: as a compound of form and matter, on the one hand, and, in physical terms, by its…
Fra Angelico’s Wings qua Event
The theme is a commonplace: a virgin receives the visit of an angel who tells her she will bear a divine child. The narrative entirely conventional: the angel visits her in her room, outside of which a more-or-less Edenic garden is also offered to our view, eventually with Adam and Eve being expelled from it…
On Beauty and Perfection // Carlos
Perfect is an adjective meaning thoroughly done (Latin per-fectus) and thereby done with care and eventually too, then, completed or free of fault. If, as a general rule, what is beautiful is that which is perfect, then neither everyone nor everything can be equally beautiful. Conversely, if, as a general rule, what is beautiful is…
Herákleitos (Heraclitus) // Carlos
Heraclitus is the first philosopher from whom we have a large collection of fragments, all likely pertaining to a book about which, nevertheless, we ignore many things(*). We have encountered him twice so far: First, when examining life’s autopoiesis (**). Secondly, when analysing the Greek gods in poetical perspective and the relation between the ephemeral…
On Abstract Music // Sofya
Abstraction is a mystery—a question mark, an opening to the unknown. Butoh, a contemporary avant-garde theatre-dance originated in Japan, is danced from a question mark, from the unexpected. Abstraction seems to me to be something similar when the mind alone is involved. Let’s take music. Music, like painting, can be both abstract and figurative; and…
Of Poetry, Gods, Heroes & Mortal Things // Carlos
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…
A Simplified World // Sofya
Hypercomplexity. It is hypercomplexity we are in need of in both ontological and epistemological terms—that is to say, in terms of our descriptions of what things are and of how we should study them. For we have lacked it for too many centuries, since Aristotle (and later Boethius, followed in this by the medieval Christian…