Hegel and Hermes again

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:43 pm By Peter Leithart

In the aforementioned book, Magee enumerates the following parallels between Hegel and Hermeticism: 1. Hegel holds that God’s being involves “creation,” the subject matter of his Philosophy of Nature. Nature is a moment of God’s being. 2. Hegel holds that God is in some sense “completed” or actualized through the intellectual activity of mankind: “Philosophy” is the final stage in the actualization of Absolute Spirit. Hegel holds the “circular” conception of God and of the cosmos I referred to earlier,... Read more

Hermeticism and gnosticism

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:43 pm By Peter Leithart

In his book on the hermeticist Hegel, Magee gives this helpful sketch of the differences between gnosticism and hermeticism: “Gnosticism and Hermeticism both believe that a divine ‘spark’ is implanted in man, and that man can come to know God. However, Gnosticism involves an absolutely negative account of creation. It does not regard creation as a part of God’s being, or as ‘completing’ God [as hermeticism does]. Nor does Gnosticism hold that God somehow needs man to know Him. Hermeticism... Read more

Hegel and Hermes

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:43 pm By Peter Leithart

In a 2001 book (Cornell), Glenn Magee argues that Hegel must be understood as a hermetic thinker. Hegel claims to have moved beyond the ancient notion of philosophy as “pursuit of wisdom” to an absolute knowledge that is simply identical with wisdom. As Magee says, “Hegel’s claim to have attained wisdom is completely contrary to the original Greek conception of philosophy as the love of wisdom, that is, the ongoing pursuit rather than the final possession of wisdom. His claim... Read more

MacIntyre on Heroic virtue

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:10 am By Peter Leithart

In After Virtue , Alasdair MacIntyre provides a neat discussion of the virtue and selfhood in Greek antiquity. The unity of ARETE, virtue, “resides . . . in the concept of that which enables a man to discharge his role,” and refers to “excellence of any kind,” whether in a footrace, a battle, or in debate. He compares the rules governing heroes, and the standards of judgment, to a chess player: “It is a question of fact whether a man... Read more

Logos: Harmony and Recipe

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:10 am By Peter Leithart

One Marc Cohen of the University of Washington, offers this account of the “logos” of Heraclitus in an online lecture outline: First, “There is an orderly, law-governed process of change in the universe. (Compare fragment 80 with Anaximander, who equates strife with injustice; for Heraclitus, strife is justice, and is ranked along with necessity as that in accordance with which all things happen.)” Second, “the unity of diverse phenomena is to be found not in their matter, but in their... Read more

Life of Heraclitus

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:46 pm By Peter Leithart

Some selections from Diogenes Laertius’ “Life of Heraclitus, from his “Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers: “He was above all men of a lofty and arrogant spirit, as is plain from his writings, in which he says, ‘Abundant learning does not form the mind; for if it did, it would have instructed Hesiod, and Pythagoras, and likewise Xenophanes, and Hecataeus. For the only piece of real wisdom is to know that idea, which by itself will govern everything on every... Read more

Asocial sociability

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:46 pm By Peter Leithart

Seigel devotes a fascinating section of his book ( Idea of the Self ) to a summary of Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees , in which Mandeville describes what Kant characterized as the “asocial sociability” of human nature. Social in the sense that even in a natural state, prior to society, human beings seek society; but asocial because they seek society in order to gain the esteem of others and dominate them. Explaining this, Mandeville distinguished between self-love, the passion... Read more

Eschatological self

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:36 pm By Peter Leithart

Jerrold Seigel suggests that Locke’s self has “three different aspects”: We are selves to others “by virtue of what they know about our mental and moral life”; we are “selves to ourselves, but incompletely so, through the imperfect consciousness we have of our lives and deeds in the here and now”; and we will transparent to ourselves at the final judgment when everything hidden is revealed. Seigel comments parenthetically that “Those of us who do not believe that such a... Read more

Interior Senses

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:45 pm By Peter Leithart

Murphy goes into admiring detail describing Thomas’s theory of interior senses in higher animals. Apart from its purely historical interest and the anticipations of later scientific theories, Thomas’s discussion has philosophical and theological interest in its own right. He claims, for instance, that there are a number of interior senses (ST, I, 78, 4): “for the reception of sensible forms, the ‘proper sense’ and the ‘common sense’ are appointed, and of their distinction we shall speak farther on (ad 1,2).... Read more

Dueling Theodicies

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:53 pm By Peter Leithart

Robert Young claims that the controversy over Darwinism in the 19th century was not so much a religion-v.-science controversy as a duel between competing theodicies. At one level, he argues, “the protagonists in the debate were in fundamental agreement. They were fighting over the best ways of rationalizing the same set of assumptions about the existing order,” especially the assumption, shared by pro- and anti-Darwinians, that nature was all red in tooth and claw. The conflict was between “an explicitly... Read more