Christian Neoplatonism
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Democracy and the Classical Tradition
I’ve been using terms like “original”, “Deep Real”, “Neoplatonism” in ways that I’m sure many readers here find obscure, if not objectionable. When I talk about Neoplatonism or about Aristotle, I’m really talking about the classical tradition, which is Neoplatonic through and through. I thought it might be helpful to excerpt from a post entitled
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Here We Are
Many of those on the right, dependent on the web of lies and the nihilism, have twisted themselves into knots in order to justify their behavior not just to others but also to themselves. It’s too painful for them to acknowledge the destructive movement that they have become part of or to acknowledge that it
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Idols and Icons
Idolatry consists in immobilizing oneself before an idol because one sees it as opaque, because one is incapable of discerning in it the hidden invitation that it offers to go beyond it. Hence, the opposite of idolatry would not consist in breaking idols, in practicing a fierce iconoclasm aimed against every inner or external Image;
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Self-Transcendence, Constraints, and Social Order
Every society needs moral norms and behavioral codes. Without them we would all be in Hobbes's state of nature. The culture war that is tearing the country apart right now is about who gets to define what those codes are. The main combatants are the Left and Right wings of our Calvinist heritage–the priggish Neo
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A Simulacral Age
The past decade has been defined by how life, the real thing, so often resembles fiction — the first Black president succeeded by a reality TV star and serial conjurer of failed businesses, the pandemic, the astounding and scary new artificial intelligence marvels monthly. “You can’t make it up,” people say. But for those of
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What Is After the Future About?
Note: Every once in a while I revise my About statement at the top of the left column on this site. I thought I'd post my most recent revision here today: After the Future is a public diary that I've been writing for over twenty years. It's what I'd be writing anyway if there were
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Genealogy Part 12B: Propositional Tyranny in the West
The following post is a mainly a background piece to provide context for the first conversation between the Greek Orthodox Bishop Maximus and the cognitive scientist John Vervaeke. This is also a contribution to my ongoing Genealogoy Series which has two primary objectives. First, to establish that the metaphysical imaginary that developed in the West