Near the beginning of the Metaphysics , Aristotle notes that “it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and stated difficulties about greater matters . . . . A man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant (whence even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of Wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders)... Read more

“All men by nature desire to know.  An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses.”  So Aristotle.  Jonathan Lear glosses: “That we take pleasure in the sheer exercise of our sensory faculties is a sign that we do have a desire for knowledge.” Obviously, Aristotle is talking about the pleasures we derive from beautiful landscapes, sunsets, paintings; the ecstasies of listening to a string quartet; the transport of aroma; the sensuality of taste and touch.  ... Read more

Levin again: “Since, for Descartes, the senses are nothing but a source of deception and the body is nothing but perishable matter – that is to say, they are challenges, in both cases, to the power of the ego cogitans , the ego must ‘abandon’ them; the Cartesian ego is a cogito which has dissociated, split off, from its embodiment and taken itself as the object of its ‘love.’ In order to possess absolute certainty and security, Descartes undergoes a... Read more

Levin interestingly explores the question of whether human beings are completely determined by history by emphasizing human embodiment.  He plays off of Heidegger, who abandoned the “analytic of Dasein” in his later work because he had come to see it as a continuation of the metaphysical tradition he was trying to escape.  What Heidegger missed was the notion that “the human body [could be] an organ of Being” or the ”primal medium into which this pre-understanding of Being is always first... Read more