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Time And Eternity (philosophy Book)
''Time and Eternity - An Essay on the Philosophy of Religion'' (1st imp. Princeton New Jersey 1952, Princeton University Press, 169 pp) is a philosophy book written by Walter Terence Stace. At the time of writing, Stace was a professor of philosophy at Princeton University, where he had worked since 1932 after a 22-year career in the Ceylon Civil Service. ''Time and Eternity'' was one of his first books about the philosophy of religion and mysticism, after writing throughout most of the 1930s and 1940s that was influenced by phenomenalist philosophy. In his introduction Stace writes that ''Time and Eternity'' is an attempt to set out the fundamental nature of religion, and to deal with the conflict between religion and naturalism. He explains that the basic idea set out in the book is that all religious thought is symbolic, and that his influences include Rudolf Otto, especially his ''Mysticism East and West'', and Immanuel Kant. He says he was motivated to write the book in a ...
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Walter Terence Stace
Walter Terence Stace (17 November 1886 – 2 August 1967) was a British civil servant, educator, public philosopher and epistemologist, who wrote on Hegel, mysticism, and moral relativism. He worked with the Ceylon Civil Service from 1910 to 1932, and from 1932 to 1955 he was employed by Princeton University in the Department of Philosophy. He is most renowned for his work in the philosophy of mysticism, and for books like ''Mysticism and Philosophy'' (1960) and '' Teachings of the Mystics'' (1960). These works have been influential in the study of mysticism, but they have also been severely criticised for their lack of methodological rigor and their perennialist pre-assumptions. Early life and education Walter Terence Stace was born in Hampstead, London into an English military family. He was a son of Major Edward Vincent Stace (3 September 1841 – 6 May 1903) (of the Royal Artillery) and Amy Mary Watson (1856 - 29 March 1934), who were married on 21 December 1872 in Poona (P ...
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Ineffability
Ineffability is the quality of something that surpasses the capacity of language to express it, often being in the form of a taboo or incomprehensible term. This property is commonly associated with philosophy, aspects of existence, and similar concepts that are inherently "too great", complex or abstract to be communicated adequately. Illogical statements, principles, reasons and arguments may be considered intrinsically ineffable along with impossibilities, contradictions and paradoxes. Terminology describing the nature of experience cannot be conveyed properly in dualistic symbolic language; it is believed that this knowledge is only held by the individual from which it originates. Profanity and vulgarisms can easily and clearly be stated, but by those who believe they should not be said, they are considered ineffable. Thus, one method of describing something that is ineffable is by using apophasis, i.e. describing what it is ''not'', rather than what it ''is''. An example i ...
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Virgil Aldrich
Virgil Charles Aldrich (13 September 1903 in Narsinghpur, British India, India – 28 May 1998 in Salt Lake City, Utah), was an American philosopher of art, Philosophy of language, language, and Philosophy of religion, religion. Early life and education The son of Floyd Clement Aldrich and his wife Ann Hanley, Virgil Aldrich earned his Bachelor of Arts degree at Ohio Wesleyan University in 1925. He studied at Oxford University in 1927 and then went on to earn a ''Diplôme d'Études Supérieures de Philosophie'' at the University of Paris, Sorbonne in 1928 before completing his Ph.D. at the University of California Berkeley in 1931. He married Louise Hafliger on 3 September 1927 and they had one son, David Virgil Aldrich. Academic career Aldrich's first academic appointment was his appointment as an professor, instructor in philosophy at Rice University in 1931 and Sterling Fellow at Yale University in 1931-32. Promoted to assistant professor, he remained at Rice until 1942, whe ...
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends across the entire range of contemporary philosophical topics, from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political philosophy, the philosophy of history, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, and the history of philosophy. Born in 1770 in Stuttgart during the transitional period between the Enlightenment and the Romantic movement in the Germanic regions of Europe, Hegel lived through and was influenced by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. His fame rests chiefly upon ''The Phenomenology of Spirit'', ''The Science of Logic'', and his lectures at the University of Berlin on topics from his ''Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences''. Throughout his work, Hegel strove to address and correct the probl ...
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Baruch Spinoza
Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, born in Amsterdam. One of the foremost exponents of 17th-century Rationalism and one of the early and seminal thinkers of the Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism including modern conceptions of the self and the universe, he came to be considered "one of the most important philosophers—and certainly the most radical—of the early modern period." Inspired by Stoicism, Jewish Rationalism, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Descartes, and a variety of heterodox religious thinkers of his day, Spinoza became a leading philosophical figure during the Dutch Golden Age. Spinoza's given name, which means "Blessed", varies among different languages. In Hebrew, his full name is written . In most of the documents and records contemporary with Spinoza's ...
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Vedanta
''Vedanta'' (; sa, वेदान्त, ), also ''Uttara Mīmāṃsā'', is one of the six (''āstika'') schools of Hindu philosophy. Literally meaning "end of the Vedas", Vedanta reflects ideas that emerged from, or were aligned with, the speculations and philosophies contained in the Upanishads, specifically, knowledge and liberation. Vedanta contains many sub-traditions, all of which are based on a common group of texts called the "Three Sources" ('' prasthānatrayī''): ''the Upanishads'', the ''Brahma Sutras'' and the '' Bhagavad Gita''. All Vedanta traditions contain extensive discussions on ontology, soteriology and epistemology, though there is much disagreement among the various schools. The main traditions of Vedanta are: ''Advaita'' (non-dualism), ''Bhedabheda'' (difference and non-difference), '' Suddhadvaita'' (pure non-dualism), ''Tattvavada ( Dvaita)'' (dualism), and ''Vishishtadvaita'' (qualified non-dualism). Modern developments in Vedanta include Neo-V ...
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Acosmism
Acosmism, held in contrast or equivalent to pantheism, denies the reality of the universe, seeing it as ultimately illusory (the prefix "ἀ-" in Greek meaning negation; like "un-" in English), and only the infinite unmanifest Absolute as real. Conceptual versions of Acosmism are found in eastern and western philosophies. In Eastern philosophy The concept of Maya in the non-dual Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism is a form of acosmism. Maya means "illusion, appearances". The universe is considered to be Māyā, however this does not mean the universe is considered as unreal. Wendy Doniger explains, "to say that the universe is an illusion (māyā) is not to say that it is unreal; it is to say, instead, that it is not what it seems to be, that it is something constantly being made. Māyā not only deceives people about the things they think they know; more basically, it limits their knowledge to things that are epistemologically and ontologically second-rate." In the Vedanta school ...
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Existence Of God
The existence of God (or more generally, the existence of deities) is a subject of debate in theology, philosophy of religion and popular culture. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God or deities can be categorized as logical, empirical, metaphysical, subjective or scientific. In philosophical terms, the question of the existence of God or deities involves the disciplines of epistemology (the nature and scope of knowledge) and ontology (study of the nature of being, existence, or reality) and the theory of value (since some definitions of God include "perfection"). The Western tradition of philosophical discussion of the existence of God or deities began with Plato and Aristotle, who made arguments that would now be categorized as cosmological. Other arguments for the existence of God or deities have been proposed by St. Anselm, who formulated the first ontological argument; Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and Thomas Aquinas, who presented their own vers ...
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Numinous
Numinous () is a term derived from the Latin ''numen'', meaning "arousing spiritual or religious emotion; mysterious or awe-inspiring."Collins English Dictionary -7th ed. - 2005 The term was given its present sense by the German theologian and philosopher Rudolf Otto in his influential 1917 German book ''The Idea of the Holy''. He also used the phrase ''mysterium tremendum'' as another description for the phenomenon. Otto's concept of the numinous influenced thinkers including Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade, and C. S. Lewis. It has been applied to theology, psychology, religious studies, literary analysis, and descriptions of psychedelic experiences. Etymology ''Numinous'' was derived in the 17th century from the Latin ''numen'', meaning a "deity or spirit presiding over a thing or space." It describes the power or presence or realisation of a divinity. It is etymologically unrelated to Immanuel Kant's ''noumenon'', a Greek term referring to an unknowable reality underlying all things ...
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Hierarchy Of Being
The great chain of being is a hierarchical structure of all matter and life, thought by medieval Christianity to have been decreed by God. The chain begins with God and descends through angels, humans, animals and plants to minerals. The great chain of being ( la, scala naturae, "Ladder of Being") is a concept derived from Plato, Aristotle (in his ''Historia Animalium''), Plotinus and Proclus. Further developed during the Middle Ages, it reached full expression in early modern Neoplatonism. Divisions The chain of being hierarchy has God at the top, above angels, which like him are entirely spirit, without material bodies, and hence unchangeable. Beneath them are humans, consisting both of spirit and matter; they change and die, and are thus essentially impermanent. Lower are animals and plants. At the bottom are the mineral materials of the earth itself; they consist only of matter. Thus, the higher the being is in the chain, the more attributes it has, including all the attrib ...
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Noumenon
In philosophy, a noumenon (, ; ; noumena) is a posited object or an event that exists independently of human sense and/or perception. The term ''noumenon'' is generally used in contrast with, or in relation to, the term ''phenomenon'', which refers to any object of the senses. Immanuel Kant first developed the notion of the noumenon as part of his transcendental idealism, suggesting that while we know the noumenal world to exist because human sensibility is merely receptive, it is not itself sensible and must therefore remain otherwise unknowable to us. In Kantian philosophy, the unknowable noumenon is often identified with or associated with the unknowable "thing-in-itself" (german: Ding an sich). However, the nature of the relationship between the two is not made explicit in Kant's work, and remains a subject of debate among Kant scholars as a result. Etymology The Greek word grc, νοούμενoν, nooúmenon, label=none (plural grc, νοούμενα, nooúmena, label=non ...
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