Visits: 15Freudian Psychoanalysis has many sources and many applications but the two publications of primary political interest are Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego and Civilisation and its Discontents. Freud’s experience of the first world war and the anti-semiticism leading up to the second world war also probably played a role in his ..read more

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Visits: 3If Spinoza was the God-intoxicated Philosopher then Leibniz was by comparison also divinely inspired by a divine understanding that provided us with a picture of the divine library of God containing our world book that, according to Leibniz, was the best book in the library. Kant may not have shared this sentiment because, as ..read more

Visits: 29 Freud and The Aristotelian Matrix: Hylomorphism and the ”Natural World” Aristotle’s contribution to establishing a philosophical method was extensive and profound. Philosophy up to and including Plato included the discovery of elenchus and dialectic methods both of which were essentially designed for a face to face debating approach that often took place in the ..read more

Visits: 47 Even if it was the case that for many hundreds of years Aristotle was referred to as “The Philosopher” and the “Master of those that know”, his teacher was Plato and his alma mater was the Academy. We do not know enough to be certain, but a fair conjecture would be that Socrates did ..read more

Visits: 37The imagination, according to Aristotle, is Janus-faced: it can either be subject to the will and be categorised as an active categorical power, or it can be characterised as a passive process in which the schema imposed upon what is seen, remembered, and “thought” has its source in sensations or feelings whose essential characteristic ..read more

Hits: 39Aristotelian Hylomorphism embraces principles that relate to both instrumental reasoning and categorical reasoning: the latter being that form of reason which focuses upon the valuable ends of action. In Ancient Greece even interlocutors such as Glaucon(Plato’s brother) appreciated the very subtle distinction between something that was good in its consequences and something that was ..read more

Hits: 25Kant makes an important distinction between civilisation and culture whilst at the same time acknowledging the importance of viewing these characterisations of mans social being-in-the-world in terms of his “lebenswelt,” rather than in terms of his technological “achievements”(techné). The latter belongs in the realm of a pragmatically based mentality which seeks to focus on ..read more

Hits: 34In the photo above we have a graveyard of paid debts if it is true that we all own nature a death. Mass graveyards like this, however, do not conjure up the picture of the occupants going quietly to their deaths. Socrates went relatively quietly to his death in spite of the fact that ..read more

Hits: 22A computer is not a robot. But even if the robot is capable of locomotion and has a computer installed connected to artificIal limbs such a robot cannot be said to act voluntarily. Voluntary Action is what Hacker calls a two-way power by which he means a power over which choice and control are ..read more