classics digests, reflections and reviews
Nature is transcendent. No work of art evokes more profound aesthetic feelings than nature. We feel the presence of the Artist, when we are confronted with, and immersed in, the beauty of His masterpiece. In that moment, what is seen becomes insignificant, compared with what is unseen. It is the Beauty that is unseen that we long to be part of, and be one with.
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Glory, as Christianity teaches me to hope for it, turns out to satisfy my original desire and indeed to reveal an element in that desire which I had not noticed …just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends or as the landscape loses the celestial light… For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that […]
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I find the myth of Narcissus fascinating, and Dali’s interpretation, more than any other artist’s, seems to have captured its meaning, from the philosophical and psychological perspective. Plato writes that, if there is no substance and permanence, if everything is constantly in flux and changing, knowledge and love would be impossible, not only because there would be nothing there to be known and loved, but also because it’s impossible to […]
Read moreWhat is Consciousness One of the things that came to mind when I read Ennead I was Alzheimer disease. I’ve heard some say that advanced Alzheimer disease makes life not worth living, and that people afflicted with this disease have become less than human. Although I strongly rejected this opinion, I did it intuitively and on emotional grounds, but failed to make any strong counter-arguments. Plotinus wrote some of his […]
Read moreWhat is Beauty? Socrates doesn’t give a definition of beauty, though he does drop some hints at an approximation of the idea, but instead, by the method of elimination, he exhibits what is not beauty, and exposes with abundant sarcasm the ignorance and conceit of him who claims to know the beautiful. “Beautiful things are difficult”, indeed, perhaps because Beauty cannot be defined due to the limitation of language itself. […]
Read morePlato discourses on the nature of beauty and love. He bases his argument on the belief that the soul is immortal and originates from the presence of god. He likens the soul to “a pair of winged horses and a charioteer.” The good steed is a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and the bad steed a mate of insolence and pride. The wing lifts the soul to the […]
Read moreA group of men gathered together for a feast and started a discourse on the nature of Love. Everybody presented their own notion of love one after another. The dialogues were half playful and half serious, but always entertaining and fascinating. Every speaker seemed to best the one preceding him, and Socrates gave the climatic, noble speech. Just when one thought that he couldn’t be topped, a drunk came in […]
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