The medieval traditionis the proverbial child and protégé of the classical tradition, which is the mother tradition. The ‘classicals’ have a contemplative or philosophic worldview of political life, while the ‘medievals’ have a religious worldview, seeking a common ground between faith and reason. (Some medievals include Al-Farabi, Maimonides, St. Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas.). The human…

The following are my reflections on the spiritual animal kingdom in the third chapter – Reason – of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (hereafter PhG). These reflections are based on paragraphs 394-418. It is noted that this section is perhaps the height of Hegel’s use of abstract language. Thus, any interpretation or reflection, despite attempts at…

What is the self? What does it mean for one to have a true sense of oneself? Is the self, or oneself or myself distinguished from other selves? These questions have pervaded human history and continue to dog the present state of the human condition. Throughout the ages, a myriad of pages and ink have…

Where do we begin? This is the question that confronts every reader of Plato. It is not that the question itself is difficult to answer, nor does it imply that posing this question is unwarranted. We can answer this question simply by suggesting that we start where Socrates starts, that is, we must start where…

In what follows, I reconstruct two of the four arguments that Kant offers in the First Critique1 that space is a priori. The arguments are stated in the section titled Transcendental Aesthetic. The first pair of arguments (1 and 2) claims that space is a priori, or independent of and precedes experience and sense perceptions;2…

Euripides’ Bacchae is no doubt a play of contradictions, or oppositions. As a whole, it aims at – to put it in Fichtean terms – the synthesis of a thesis and an antithesis. But this synthesis is more about striking a balance between opposite things or ideas than it is about superseding their differences. Balance,…