|
Metaxy
Metaxy (, also used as ''metaxú'', 'between') is a concept originating in Platonic philosophy, developed by Neoplatonic philosophers such as Plotinus. Several philosophers in the twentieth-century repurposed the concept, such as Eric Voegelin, Simone Weil, and William Desmond. Neoplatonists like Plotinus used the concept to express an ontological placement of Man between the Gods and animals. Metaxy as used by Voegelin refers to the permanent place where man is in-between two poles of existence. One example is the infinite ''(apeiron'') and the finite (the divine mind or ''nous'') reality of existence. Another example is between the beginning of existence (''apeiron'') and the beyond existence ('' epekeina''). Voegelin defined metaxy as the connection of the mind or ''nous'' to the material world and the reverse of the material world's connection to the mind as "consciousness of being". Under Voegelin's definition it can also mean a form of perception in contrast to consciousn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eric Voegelin
Eric Voegelin (born Erich Hermann Wilhelm Vögelin, ; January 3, 1901 – January 19, 1985) was a German-American political philosopher. He was born in Cologne, and educated in political science at the University of Vienna, where he became an associate professor of political science in the law faculty. In 1938, he and his wife fled from the Nazi forces which had entered Vienna. They emigrated to the United States, where they became citizens in 1944. He spent most of his academic career at Louisiana State University, the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. Early life Voegelin was born in Cologne on January 3, 1901. His parents moved to Vienna in 1910, and he eventually studied at the University of Vienna. The advisers on his dissertation were Hans Kelsen and Othmar Spann. After his habilitation there in 1928, he taught political theory and sociology. In Austria, Voegelin began lasting friendships with Alfred Schütz and with Fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simone Weil
Simone Adolphine Weil ( ; ; 3 February 1909 – 24 August 1943) was a French philosopher, mystic and political activist. Despite her short life, her ideas concerning religion, spirituality, and politics have remained widely influential in contemporary philosophy. She was born in Paris to an Alsatian Jewish family. Her elder brother, André, would later become a renowned mathematician. After her graduation from formal education, Weil became a teacher. She taught intermittently throughout the 1930s, taking several breaks because of poor health and in order to devote herself to political activism. She assisted in the trade union movement, taking the side of the anarchists known as the Durruti Column in the Spanish Civil War. During a twelve-month period she worked as a labourer, mostly in car factories, so that she could better understand the working class. Weil became increasingly religious and inclined towards mysticism as her life progressed. She died of heart failure in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Platonism
Platonism is the philosophy of Plato and philosophical systems closely derived from it, though contemporary Platonists do not necessarily accept all doctrines of Plato. Platonism has had a profound effect on Western thought. At the most fundamental level, Platonism affirms the existence of abstract objects, which are asserted to exist in a third realm distinct from both the sensible external world and from the internal world of consciousness, and is the opposite of nominalism." Philosophers who affirm the existence of abstract objects are sometimes called platonists; those who deny their existence are sometimes called nominalists. The terms "platonism" and "nominalism" have established senses in the history of philosophy, where they denote positions that have little to do with the modern notion of an abstract object. In this connection, it is essential to bear in mind that modern platonists (with a small 'p') need not accept any of the doctrines of Plato, just as modern nomina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nous
''Nous'' (, ), from , is a concept from classical philosophy, sometimes equated to intellect or intelligence, for the cognitive skill, faculty of the human mind necessary for understanding what is truth, true or reality, real. Alternative English terms used in philosophy include "understanding" and "mind"; or sometimes "thought" or "reason" (in the sense of that which reasons, not the activity of reasoning). It is also often described as something equivalent to perception except that it works within the mind ("the mind's eye"). It has been suggested that the basic meaning is something like "awareness". In colloquial British English, ''nous'' also denotes "good sense", which is close to one everyday meaning it had in Ancient Greece. The ''nous'' performed a role comparable to the modern concept of intuition (philosophy), intuition. In Aristotle's philosophy, which was influential on later conceptions of the category, ''nous'' was carefully distinguished from sense perception, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Compassion
Compassion is a social feeling that motivates people to go out of their way to relieve the physical, mental, or emotional pains of others and themselves. Compassion is sensitivity to the emotional aspects of the suffering of others. When based on notions such as fairness, justice, and interdependence, it may be considered partially rational in nature. Compassion involves "feeling for another" and is a precursor to empathy, the "feeling as another" capacity (as opposed to sympathy, the "feeling towards another"). In common parlance, active compassion is the desire to alleviate another's suffering. Compassion involves allowing oneself to be moved by suffering to help alleviate and prevent it. An act of compassion is one that is intended to be helpfulness, helpful. Other virtues that harmonize with compassion include patience, wisdom, kindness, Psychological resilience, perseverance, warmth, and resolve. It is often, though not inevitably, the key component in altruism. The differ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ellis Sandoz
Ellis Sandoz Jr. (February 10, 1931 – September 19, 2023) was an American academic and political scientist. He was the Hermann Moyse Jr. Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Director of the Eric Voegelin Institute for American Renaissance Studies at Louisiana State University. Sandoz was also the chairman of that department. Biography Ellis Sandoz was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on February 10, 1931. VIAF"Sandoz, Ellis"/ref> A native of Louisiana whose family first came there from Switzerland in 1829, he was a United States Marine Corps veteran (1953–1956). He was educated at Louisiana State University (B. A., 1951; M. A., 1953), also at the University of North Carolina, Georgetown, Heidelberg, and the University of Munich where he completed his doctorate (Dr. oec. publ.) with Eric Voegelin in 1965, Sandoz is the only American to do so. Sandoz joined Louisiana State University faculty in 1978. Sandoz was a specialist in the field of political philosophy ( Amer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Immanence
The doctrine or theory of immanence holds that the divine encompasses or is manifested in the material world. It is held by some philosophical and metaphysical Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of h ... theories of divine presence. Immanence is usually applied in monotheism, monotheistic, Pantheism, pantheistic, Pandeism, pandeistic, or Panentheism, panentheistic faiths to suggest that the spirituality, spiritual world permeates the Wikt:mundane, mundane. It is often contrasted with theories of transcendence (religion), transcendence, in which the divine is seen to be outside the physical world, material world. Major faiths commonly devote significant philosophical efforts to explaining the relationship between immanence and transcendence but do so in different ways, su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of a state or object, either internal to oneself or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, and theologians. Opinions differ about what exactly needs to be studied or even considered consciousness. In some explanations, it is synonymous with the mind, and at other times, an aspect of it. In the past, it was one's "inner life", the world of introspection, of private thought, imagination, and volition (psychology), volition. Today, it often includes any kind of cognition, experience, feeling, or perception. It may be awareness, awareness of awareness, metacognition, or self-awareness, either continuously changing or not. The disparate range of research, notions, and speculations raises a curiosity about whether the right questions are being asked. Examples of the range of descriptions, definitions or explanations are: ordered distinc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transcendence (philosophy)
In philosophy, transcendence is the basic ground concept from the word's literal meaning (from Latin), of climbing or going beyond, albeit with varying connotations in its different historical and cultural stages. It includes philosophies, systems, and approaches that describe the fundamental structures of being, not as an ontology (theory of being), but as the framework of emergence and validation of knowledge of being. These definitions are generally grounded in reason and empirical observation and seek to provide a framework for understanding the world that is not reliant on religious beliefs or supernatural forces. "Transcendental" is a word derived from the scholastic, designating the extra-categorical attributes of beings. Caygill, Howard. ''A Kant Dictionary''. (Blackwell Philosopher Dictionaries), Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2000, p. 398 Religious definition In religion, transcendence refers to the aspect of God's nature and power which is wholly independent of the mate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Existence
Existence is the state of having being or reality in contrast to nonexistence and nonbeing. Existence is often contrasted with essence: the essence of an entity is its essential features or qualities, which can be understood even if one does not know whether the entity exists. Ontology is the philosophical discipline studying the nature and types of existence. Singular existence is the existence of individual entities while general existence refers to the existence of concepts or universals. Entities present in space and time have Abstract and concrete, concrete existence in contrast to abstract entities, like numbers and sets. Other distinctions are between Subjunctive possibility, possible, Contingency (philosophy), contingent, and Metaphysical necessity, necessary existence and between Matter, physical and Mind, mental existence. The common view is that an entity either exists or not with nothing in between, but some philosophers say that there are degrees of existence, me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apeiron (cosmology)
''Apeiron'' (; ) is a Greek word meaning '(that which is) unlimited; boundless; infinite; indefinite' from ''a-'' 'without' and ''peirar'' 'end, limit; boundary', the Ionic Greek form of ''peras'' 'end, limit, boundary'. Origin of everything The ''apeiron'' is central to the cosmological theory created by Anaximander, a 6th-century BC pre-Socratic Greek philosopher whose work is mostly lost. From the few existing fragments, we learn that he believed the beginning or ultimate reality ('' arche'') is eternal and infinite, or boundless (''apeiron''), subject to neither old age nor decay, which perpetually yields fresh materials from which everything we can perceive is derived. ''Apeiron'' generated the opposites (hot–cold, wet–dry, etc.) which acted on the creation of the world (cf. Heraclitus). Everything is generated from ''apeiron'' and then it is destroyed by going back to ''apeiron'', according to necessity. He believed that infinite worlds are generated from ''apeiron' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neoplatonists
Neoplatonism is a version of Platonic philosophy that emerged in the 3rd century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and religion. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as a series of thinkers. Among the common ideas it maintains is monism, the doctrine that all of reality can be derived from a single principle, "the One". Neoplatonism began with Ammonius Saccas and his student Plotinus (c. 204/5 – 271 AD) and stretched to the sixth century. After Plotinus there were three distinct periods in the history of neoplatonism: the work of his student Porphyry (third to early fourth century); that of Iamblichus (third to fourth century); and the period in the fifth and sixth centuries, when the academies in Alexandria and Athens flourished. Neoplatonism had an enduring influence on the subsequent history of Western philosophy and religion. In the Middle Ages, Neoplatonic ideas were studied and discussed by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thinke ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
