As we trace the intellectual developments through beyond Middle Ages into and beyond the Enlightenment Era, we find that reason and logic, referred to more specifically as rationalism and empiricism, become the predominant intellectual building blocks of scientific inquiry, what had been… Read More ›
Metaphysics
The Metaphysics of Morality: Kantian Cognitive Ontology
The Enlightenment no doubt represents one of the most transformative periods in the history of civilization. While it was primarily an intellectual (really philosophical) movement, with a locus in 8th century Europe, it is rooted in intellectual developments that took… Read More ›
The Age of Enlightenment: The Philosophy of Science
Ever since the dawn of civilization mankind has created mythological, semantic and metaphysical paradigms within which the nature of existence and knowledge itself, along with the underlying order of the heavens and the earth and all its creatures within it,… Read More ›
Islamic Philosophy: Allāh as the Final Cause
One cannot properly explore the evolution of metaphysics and theology in Western civilization and its metamorphosis into science, without having some level of understanding of its development and evolution after the so-called fall of the Roman Empire through the Middle Ages,… Read More ›
Stoicism: Naturalism, Corporealism and Logos
In the period of philosophical development that arose as the influence of the Greek culture bled into the period of Roman/ Latin dominance in the Mediterranean and Near East, both the Stoic as well as the Epicurean philosophic schools rose… Read More ›
Aristotle’s Metaphysics: Causality and Theology in Antiquity
Aristotle is arguably one of, if not the, most influential philosophers in the history of Western civilization, outlining in painstaking detail not only a fully formed and comprehensive system of reason and logic, but also a comprehensive system metaphysics, what some… Read More ›
Logos from Mythos: The Heart of Eurasian Philosophy
At some level, a religious tradition can be thought of as distinguished by, or even defined by, its creation story – i.e. its cosmological narrative – and the Hindu/Vedic tradition is no different in this regard although it has many… Read More ›
The Lǎozǐ and Zhuangzi: Daoism and the Way of Virtue
As the Confucian school was referred to as Rújiā, the Daoist school was referred to as Daojiā, each called out as one of the six main philosophical schools during the Warring States Period to the Early/Former Han. While a Daoist “canon”… Read More ›
Plato and the Allegory of the Cave: Ideas, Being and Becoming
The first systematic treatment of philosophy, and arguably the most influential, in the West can be found in works of Plato, in particular in his works the Phaedo, the Republic and the Timaeus which are by most accounts the most influential of… Read More ›
Pythagoras: The Father of Hellenic Philosophy
Pythagoras, Thales of Miletus, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Xenophanes, Zeno, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, and Democritus all made contributions to Pre-Socratic philosophical thought and were referenced by later philosophers and historians to some extent or another. Although none of the complete works of Pre-Socratic philosophers survive today… Read More ›
Buddhist Philosophy: Impermanence, Suffering and the “No-Self”
Running parallel to the maturation and evolution of Hellenic philosophy, to the East the Indo-Aryan people were going through a similar intellectual revolution from the prevalence of ritual and ceremonial worship of gods and goddesses embedded in their mythologically steeped traditions… Read More ›
Upanishadic Philosophy: Brahmavidyā and the Soul
Orthodox Indian philosophy, the legacy of the Indo-Aryans, takes on a much different form than it does in the West, and in turn a much different form that it does in the Far East, despite the fact that the intellectual… Read More ›
The Metaphysics of the I Ching: The Alignment of Heaven, Man and Earth
While the translational difficulties from Traditional Chinese into English are fairly well documented, even with the introduction of the Pinyin Romanization system of Chinese words in the middle of the twentieth century which is now predominantly used, it’s with noting… Read More ›
Ancient Chinese Theology: From Shàngdì to Tiān
The Chinese civilization is if not the, then certainly one of, the oldest persistent civilizations on the planet.[1] Its roots go back to the early part of the second millennium BCE with the first dynastic empire, the Xia Dynasty (circa c…. Read More ›
From the (Ancient) Far East: The Translation Challenge
We see the first evidence of Chinese writing, pictograms or logograms on bronze and bone artifacts from the last years of the Xia Dynasty (2070 – 1600 BCE), almost four thousand years ago. This writing system, the foundations of which became the what… Read More ›