Essay on the cenoscopic/idioscopic revised and published in the USA
On the Cenoscopic and the Idioscopic The edition available in my list of Essays (under the “Works” menu) is actually more interesting, for it includes a number of illustrations. The text is, with few and very minor exceptions, the same.
Duas lágrimas
Nossas vidas emocionais parecem simples. Choramos, rimos. Toda criança faz isso. Presumimos que sofisticação, paradoxo e mistério sejam reservados para as atividades mais adultas da razão e reflexão. Quando procuramos as dimensões mais profundas do mundo, e as mais furtivas das nossas próprias vidas, nos voltamos para os provedores de sistema e argumento. Deixamos […]
Two Tears
Our emotional lives seem simple – we cry, we laugh. Children can do it. Thus, we presume that matters of sophistication, high discernment and mystery are reserved to the more adult activities of reason. When in pursuit of the deeper dimensions of the world, or the more recondite […]
The Philosopher and the Poet – Siblings in Intuition
Aristotle teaches that the philosopher and the poet both attend to the marvelous, and thus enjoy an occupational kinship. We might expand upon his observation by identifying the effects of such attention. In other words, what happens to us in the presence of marvels that could bring the unlikely bedfellows of philosophy and poetry into […]
Protology and Eschatology in Miniature
(Portuguese original here: Protologia e escatologia em miniatura) Many today, even those otherwise sympathetic to Christianity, find the Bible simply unbelievable. Foremost among the reasons are that its beginning seems so “mythological” and its end so bizarre. In other words they find the opening of Genesis – with its Biblical protology, that is, narration of origins: […]
Apocalypse Recordings in New Home
My 1990 recorded meditations on the Apocalypse are no longer in separate posts, but rather brought together under a new menu (above, at the right): “Eschatology.” A duplication of the second episode in the third has been corrected.
Deixando Tróia
A ponta noroeste da ‘Ásia Menor’ (hoje Turquia) representava para o mundo antigo a extremidade mais a Oeste do enorme e populoso continente asiático. Ele se estende até o Japão, ao norte, e até a Nova Guiné, ao sul. Mesopotâmia, Pérsia, Índia e China todas se situam lá, com o peso de seus milênios de […]
First or Only? (the battle between the ordinal and the cardinal in the Reformation)
As this year marks 500 years since the excommunication of Martin Luther in 1521 – a declaration that still resonates today – I decided to reread the documents of that belated and belabored answer to Luther’s claims, the Catholic Church’s Council of Trent (1545-63). As I read, I was struck by a seldom-commented feature of […]
Onde começa a Filosofia… (Where philosophy begins…)
…nem precisa de palavras… (…no words are needed)
O sábio e o gnóstico (1ª parte)
Entendemos por sabedoria uma visão verídica e aberta que versa de certa forma sobre a totalidade da realidade, tanto em termos teóricos quanto morais, e que seja, segundo a expressão de Platão, “sinótica,” vendo as coisas nas suas mais íntimas conexões. A tradição cristã ensina que ela existe em três modalidades em ordem ascendente: sabedoria […]