PHILOSOPHY

QUESTIONS OF PHILOSOPHY

Psychological, Historical and Epistemological

In Search of the Perfect Language  (New Essay)
Umberto Eco, Paul van Buren, Don Cupitt, and Benny Shanon in search of a perfect language.

Time, Timelessness and the Ungraspable Self
The Enigma of Time and timelessness, or Non-Time, in relation to our ongoing sense of self and its origin in experience.

Cupitt’s Unlearning Self  – (a new, three part essay)
The religious reformer and philosopher Don Cupitt’s unwitting misrepresentation of ‘meditation’, ‘mysticism’, the ‘paranormal’ and, particularly, the experience of ’emptiness’ in Buddhist/Yogic tradition.

C.G. Jung, William James, Fredrich Myers, Mythopoesis and Creativity
The mind’s inbuilt capacity for creativity as explored by Edward and Emily Kelly, F.W.H. Myers, William James, Carl Jung and Henri Bergson in relation to the development of a ‘suitable language’.

The Dawkins-Hitchens Challenge to Religion
Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Emile Durkheim and Rudolf Otto in relation to ‘self absorption’ and ‘socio-cultural absorption’ over and against the “mysterium tremendum et fascinans”.

D.H.Lawrence, C.G. Jung, Herbert Read, William James & Depth Psychology
D.H. Lawrence, C.G. Jung, Herbert Read and the dynamic, creative ‘energies’ of consciousness in relation to Jung’s ubiquitous ‘architypes’

The Hermetic Countercurrent to Secular Humanism – (a new essay)
The shadow of Hermetic thought as found in Renaissance prgmatism, and in the writings of Balzac, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Joyce, Proust, Mann, Yeats and Rilke. And Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandrian Quartet where the Hermetica is referred to directly.

The Jung-James Nexus – (a new essay)
The depth psychology of Carl Jung, its support in the thinking of William James, and its displacement by J.B. Watson’s radical behaviourism and the now burgeoning reassessment of ‘matter’ in relation to ‘mind’ and the nature of ‘substance’

The Schleiermacher-Manichaean Synthesis
Christian theology turned onto its head, and perception and ‘self-consciousness’ re-evaluated in relation to Manichaean doctrine and practice.

The Ongoing Spong-Cupitt Debate-1 – (a new essay)
The mystical humanism of Bishop Spong versus the deterministic humanism of Don Cupitt.

The Ongoing Spong-Cupitt Debate-2 –  (a new essay)
A comparison of Bishop Spong’s, Don Cupitt’s and Alan Watts’ confronting evaluations of Christianity’s supra-mundane God.

The Subject-Object Dichotomy
Knowledge, knowing and meaning and the nefarious use of symbols in the modernism-postmodernism debate.

Fatalistic Determinism – 1 –  (a new essay)
Postmodernism’s radical reassessment of what constitutes the ‘human’ questioned as to its validity and effect

Fatalistic Determinism – 2 –  (a new essay)
Postmodernism’s radical reassessment of what constitutes the ‘human’ questioned as to its validity and effect

Plato’s Royal Road to Mysticism
Neoplatonic thought, the advent of Plotinus, and the influence of Platonic thinking on Christianity.

The Carroll-Cupitt Duet On Humanism –  (a new essay)
The theory that verbal and non-verbal states do not lie at the opposite ends of a graduated mental spectrum, but that they are complimentary states during all instances of mental work.

The Strassman-Monroe Enigma – (a new essay)
The dark zone beyond intellect, DMT, OBE’s and the question of what ‘psyche’ is in itself in relation to nature.

The Strassman-Shanon Enigma – (a new essay)
DMT, OBE’s and ‘primary meanings’ in relation to Benny Shanon’s ‘other’ semantic level of comprehension.

The Babylonian Lottery-1 – (a new essay)
The social, intellectual and religious implications of going beyond the limitations of language as mooted by Paul van Buren, Don Cupitt and Benny Shanon.

The Babylonian Lottery-2   – (a new essay)
The theory that verbal and non-verbal states do not lie at the opposite ends of a graduated mental spectrum, but that they are complimentary states during all instances of mental work.

The Eleusinian Mysteries
The ‘afterlife’ in the Greek mysteries, the experience of ‘sober intoxication’ that convinced initiates of the afterlife’s validity, and the attempt of Christian thinkers to gainsay both these mysteries and their later Gnostic equivalent.

The Heidegger Paradox – (a new essay)
Ultimate questions concerning language – even Heidegger’s carefully constructed ‘new’ language – being used as a tool to define Being and beings.

The Heidegger-Sartre Black Hole – (a new essay)
Conciousness as a transparent Medium, hole or psychometal abyss void of time, or a dilating, camera like aperture in psyche capable of registering a range of perceptual-conceptual depths of focus?

The McEvilley Bombshell
THOMAS McEVILLEY’S RE-EVALUATION OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
A historical exploration of the mystical-philosophical connections between India and Greece in relation to the thinking of Parmenides, Plato and Descartes.

The Nagel-Pinker Divide
Thomas Nagel’s argument against theoretical reductionism and evolutionary naturalism in relation to the nature of ‘matter’ and what matters.

The Steiner Imperative
Hermeneutics as the ‘enactment of answerable understanding and active apprehension’ that allows another’s creative contribution an intelligible life beyond analysis