Prompted and ever diversified by the specifically human interrogative logos, scientific inquiries seek a common system of links in order to mutually confirm and rectify their results. Coming closer and closer to phenomenology, the sciences of life find the common ground of the reality in the ontopoiesis of life. Could it not be that the interrogative logos of science, participating in human creative inventiveness will bring together also the divergent scientific methods in a common network? A (...) network which comprises natural processes, societal sharing-in-life, and existential communication. Papers by: Gary Backhaus, Anjana Bhattacharjee, Simon Du Plock, Ignacy Fiut, Maria Golaszewska, Wendy C. Hamblet, Alexandr Kouzmin, Nikolay Kozhevnikov, Olga Louchakova, Jarlath Mc Kenna, Amy Louise Miller, Aria Omrani, Arthur Piper, Leszek Pyra, W. Kim Rogers, A.L. Samian, Camilo Serrano Bonitto, Natalia Smirnova, Eva Syristova, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Roberto Verolini, Eldon C. Wait, Leo Zonneveld. (shrink)

The contributions, composed in this volume, are inspired not only by the necessity but also by the potentialities of a process which continues and deepens cross-cultural understanding, especially between Islamic and Western philosophy. Following the tradition of an East-Western symphony of thoughts, the authors focus on common horizons and while applying comparative and historical approaches, varieties of unity appear on the ways towards a New Enlightenment. The creative force, orchestrating the harmony in the web of Life, communicates in the (...) mean time with the capacities of human beings, advancing in deciphering its micro-macrocosmic dimensions. Here, the encounter of the Logos of Life Philosophy (A-T. Tymieniecka) and Islamic Philosophy open the space for constructive disputation. In the wake of the crisis of postmodern unknowability, paths towards a new critique of reason go hand in hand with fundamental issues, being reflected newly. (shrink)

Body image and body schema are two phenomenological concepts which generated a revival of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical heritage. In the present text I intend to inquire on the relation between these two concepts and that of Logos of life, another challenging point in the Merleau-Pontyan thought.In order to delineate the correlation between body schema, body image and my understanding of a logic of life, I will first explore how what I term “schematism of the body” is connected (...) to an inherent model of life and living and how this schematism is reflected in the body image. I will turn further to the relation between body and world and highlight how the life of the body defines itself as meaningful in the context of both the surrounding world and the lifeworld. In a third part of my analysis I shall point out how the relation between body schematism and motile intentionality redefines corporeal inten-tionality. I shall conclude by noting the role of the Logos of life, through which corporeity, in its position of meaning project, is instituted as body schematism.Los conceptos fenomenológicos de imagen corporal y esquema corporal han dado lugar a un resurgimiento del legado filosófico de Maurice Merleau-Ponty. En este texto pretendo investigar la relación entre estos dos conceptos y el de Logos de la vida, otro elemento estimulante del pensamiento Merleau-Pontiano.Con el fin de trazar la correlación entre es-quema corporal, imagen corporal y mi interpretación de la lógica de la vida, exploraré en pri-mer lugar cómo el término “esquematismo del cuerpo” está conectado con un modelo inheren-te de vida y de vivir, y cómo este esquematis-mo se refleja en la imagen corporal. Consideraré después la relación entre cuerpo y mundo y remarcaré cómo la vida del cuerpo se define como significativa en el contexto tanto del mundo circundante como del mundo de la vida. En la tercera parte de mi análisis señalaré cómo la relación entre esquematismo corporal e intencionalidad moto-ra redefine la intencionalidad corporal. Concluiré destacando el papel del Logos de la vida, a través del cual la corporeidad, en su posición de proyecto significativo, se instituye como esquematismo corpora. (shrink)

With a novel approach to Aristotle's zoology, this study looks at animals as creatures of nature and reveals a scientific discourse that, in response to his predecessors, exiles logos as reason and pursues the logos intrinsic to animals' bodies empowering them to sense the world and live. The volume explores Aristotle's conception of animals through a discussion of his ad hoc methodology to study them, including the pertinence of the soul to such a study, and the rise of (...) zoology as a branch of natural philosophy. For Aristotle, animal life stems from the body in the space of existence and revolves around sensation, which is entwined with pleasure, pain, and desire. Lack of human reason is irrelevant to an understanding of the richness of animal life and cognition. In sum, the reader will acquire knowledge of the animal as such, which lay at the core of Aristotle's agenda and required a study of its own, separate from plants and the elements. This book is intended for students of history of science, ancient biology and philosophy and all those who, from different fields, are interested in animal studies and the human/animal relation. (shrink)

This article establishes the relevance of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s work for understanding human communication. Tymieniecka’s cosmology, available in her four-volume series Logos and Life (1988–2000) and supplemented by prolific writings across several decades, articulates a ‘third phenomenology’ – a phenomenology of life. Her work fulfils Edmund Husserl’s original phenomenology of consciousness and Roman Ingarden’s second phenomenology of realism/idealism. Tymieniecka’s ontopoietic cosmology, which strenuously resists linear form, is interwoven with the possibilities of human communication. Her works explain life (...) as the expansion of logos: recursively the vital sphere initiates logos, forcing the existential sphere, concurrently prompting the social sphere of the human condition. The human station reveals meaning-bestowing functions: the creative-imaginative origin urges the aesthetic, moral, and intellective senses. Self-individualizing development concurrently desires communicative participation in life. The lived-body and sign/word allow one to re-establish ties to communal life after self-individualization. At the human ‘crown’, life recedes through an individual quest for spiritual development, inspired by a desire for transcendence. (shrink)

Employing her original concept of the ontopoiesis of life, the author uncovers the intrinsic law of the primogenital logos - that which operates in the working of the indivisible dyad of impetus and equipoise. This is the crucial, intrinsically motivated device of logoic constructivism. This key instrument is engaged - is at play - at every stage of the advance of life. In a feat unprecedented in the history of western philosophy, the emergence and unfolding of the (...) entire orbit of the human universe is shown to bear out this insight. Furthermore, the intrinsic rhythms of impetus and equipoise are taken as a guide in uncovering the workings of the logos all at once, in contrast to the piecemeal exposition of a single line of argument. In a schema covering the entire career of beingness-in-becoming between the infinities of origin and destiny, an historically unprecedented harmonizing all sectors of rationality is accomplished in a span of reflection comparable to Spinoza's Ethics. The work draws on interdisciplinary investigations in both science and the arts. All of the history of Occidental philosophy finds summary in it, even as feelers, guidelines, leitmotifs are thrown out for its future development. A landmark of Occidental philosophy at the turn of the millennium. (shrink)

The social and ecological crises of the twenty-first century represent a failure of the techno-industrial way of living and knowing. It has become apparent that we need both a new mythos and a new science. In this essay, I draw attention to the important epistemological and cosmological implications of enactivism, a still emerging paradigm within the life sciences. Guided by the insights of the enactive paradigm, I offer a new story of human origins and destiny in an attempt to (...) contribute to a more livable future for our species and the rest of the community of life on Earth. (shrink)

With this fourth volume in her Logos and Life series, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka offers a monumental, comprehensive philosophical system, the likes of which have not been hitherto attempted since the metaphysics of Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead. Certainly, this is the most expansive system to be produced from a phenomenological thinker. Husserl did not bring a system to fruition; Heidegger abandoned his project for the hermeneutic ontology of Dasein; Scheler never gathered together his large scope of ideas; and (...) Merleau-Ponty’s ontology is unfinished and sketchy. Broadly characterized, Tymieniecka’s logos of life is a nonsubstantive, process philosophy of the reason of reason, or the sense of sense, which is a refashioning of her phenomenology of life and the human condition—the culminating synthesis of approximately forty years of research. (shrink)

With the publication of this volume, Tymieniecka has brought her earlier concerns for a reform of phenomenology to a new level of sophistication in a comprehensive and challenging work. The central theme is the critique of reason, and a radically new approach is achieved through the decision to study the creative process in man. This links reason to human life processes as they unfold in the self-differentiation of man.

Volume 1 of this work, subtitled Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason and reviewed in these pages by Dallas Laskey, is a study of human creative processes, for it is, Tymieniecka argues, the creative imagination and the will which are the wellspring of all human life. These creative processes, which are to be understood as "man's self-interpretation-in-existence," reach their natural or worldly pinnacle in historical, cultural communities with their poetic, moral, and intelligible productions. Such communities, however, emerging and (...) decaying in turn, cannot confer an ultimate significance on human life. Hence, the present volume turns its attention to the elucidation of the "transnatural destiny" of the human being, of the ways in which human creativity orients us toward the divine. This elucidation of the experience of the divine will complete the account of human creativity because we shall discover that the divine reveals itself to us in human inwardness, in the human formulation of the sacred message: "the ciphering of the sacred message advances through man's self-ciphering-in-the-sacred.". (shrink)

Although the d efinition of truth first proposed by Aristotle and maintained as the reference point for all succeeding views was situated in the intellective sphere of rationality/logos in the human unfolding, its validity, that is, the validity of the proposition fram ing it, and its verification reaches far below the logical sphere of a statement. Truth's validity reverberates down from the intellective sphere of the mind's rationality into the spheres of sense that sustain it, within the multiple spheres (...) of the network, of sense in\which; the logos of life projects its manifestation1 through living beings and whole world of life. To grasp the full significance of notions of truth we cannot stop at any one perspective or sphere, whether the cognitive, intertextual, or pragmatic. To understand what "truth" means we should elucidate it in its origin and nature, that is, in its generative significance for the entire expanse of life and in its role within the logoic schema of its dynamic manifesta tion. I propose to outline this in a succinct way in what follows. Truth will emerge as a crucial logoic device, as the regulative vortex for the ontopoietic balancing out of life's forces in their constructive course. (shrink)

From Aristotle to the present, memory has been grasped as a trace or impression of lost reality – bridging physiological experience and consciousness. Philosophers have vainly sought the nature of this bridge. The present-day physiologizing/naturalizing of consciousness is not resolving their congenital continuity, in which the very existence and practice of life is rooted. We have to change our approach. The Aristotelian congenital ties between memory and temporality, acquire crucial significance in our primogenital ontopoiesis of life. It reveals (...) memory to be the factor that carries this coalescence and the becoming of life itself. This can be the fruit only of the generative springs of life, first phenomenology/philosophy, the ontopoietic logos of life. In this collection we explore memory in the constitution of reality: rememorizing and interpretation, consciousness/action, facts/imagination, history/myths, self-realization/metamorphosis. (shrink)

人間存在の総体性の回復、人称的対立における和解と統合の試み。日々の風景、断想、聖書研究等も収録。.

Giorgio Agamben and Ludwig Wittgenstein seem to have very little in common: the former is concerned with traditional ontological issues while the latter was interested in logics and ordinary language, avoiding metaphysical issues as something we cannot speak about. However, both share a crucial notion for their philosophical projects: form of life. In this paper, I try to show that, despite their different approaches and goals, form of life is for both a crucial notion for thinking ethics and (...) life in-common. Addressing human existence in its constitutive relation to language, this notion deconstructs traditional dichotomies like bios and zoé, the cultural and the biological, enabling both authors to think of a life which cannot be separated from its forms, recognizing the commonality of logos as the specific trait of human existence. Through an analogical reading between both theoretical frameworks, I suggest that the notion of form-of-life, elaborated by Wittgenstein to address human production of meaning, becomes the key notion in Agamben's affirmative thinking since it enables us to consider the common ontologically in its relation to Human potentialities and to foresee a new, common use of the world and ourselves. Giorgio Agamben e Ludwig Wittgenstein parecem ter muito pouco em comum: o primeiro se ocupa de questões ontológicas tradicionais, enquanto o segundo estava interessado na Lógica e na linguagem corrente, evitando os problemas metafísicos como algo de que não podemos falar. No entanto, ambos partilham um conceito crucial para seus projetos filosóficos respectivos: forma de vida. Este artigo tento mostrar que, apesar de seus diferentes enfoques e objetivos, a noção de forma de vida é fundamental no momento de pensar a ética e a vida em-comum. Abordando a existência humana em sua relação constitutiva com a língua, essa noção desconstrói dicotomias tradicionais como bios e zoe, o cultural e o biológico, permitindo-lhes pensar uma vida que não pode ser separada de suas formas, e reconhecendo o caráter comum do logos como o traço específico da existência humana. Através de uma leitura analógica entre ambos quadros teóricos, sugiro que a noção de forma-de-vida, elaborada por Wittgenstein para abordar a produção humana de significados, tornase o conceito-chave do pensamento afirmativo de Agamben, já que nos permite considerar o comum ontologicamente em sua relação com as potencialidades humanas e vislumbrar um uso novo e comum do mundo e de nós mesmos. (shrink)

Is life a simple result of a conjunction of physico-chemical processes? Can be reduced to a mere juxtaposition of spatially determined events? What epistemology or world-view allows us to comprehend it? Aristotle built a novel philosophical system in which nature is a dynamical totality which is in constant movement. Life is a manifestation of it, and is formed and governed by the psyche. Psyche is the organizational principle of the different biological levels: nutritive, perceptive and intelective. Driesch's crucial (...) experiment provided empirical proof of the principle of life, which he called entelechy. Entelechy is an intensive manifoldness and cannot be comprehended by the usual extensive parameters. The entelechian's own ambiance is duration. This allows the reintroduction of the concept of teleology in the sphere of the living, understood not as a final cause, but as an order born from desire and leading to action. (shrink)

This article presents phenomenological meta-analysis of Tymieniecka's phenomenology of life with regard to its strategies of knowledge. The novelty of phenomenology of life consists in special orientation of direct intuition of Tymieniecka's insight. The analysis suggests that the positioning of the direct intuition differes from philosopher to philosopher. Even though this perspective pays attention to individual differences in philosophical thinking, this view has to be distinguished froll1 psychologism as criticized by Husser!. and rather, seen as a development of (...) Husserl 's lheory of direct intuition. A framework for such analysis can be also found in Islamic philosophies of Suhrawardi and Ibn 'Arabi, who introduced the concepts of individual predisposition, modes of knowledge, and self-knowledge mediated by knowledge by presence. These concepts can be applied to understanding of the origins of philosophical insight. The paper examines in depth the workings of direct, or presentive, intuition in Tymieniecka's descriptions of the phenomenal field of life, and of life per se as a dynamic object. It demonstrates the dialogical nature of interrogation, and the sentience of logos as a horizon of philosophical inquiry. Finally, the paper introduces the concept of process phenomenology, and suggests directions of future research with regard to phenomenology of imagination. (shrink)

An important idea in antiquity was that to engage in philosophy meant more than the theoretical inquiry into fundamental questions, it was also conceived of as a way of life modelled on the philosophical life of Socrates. In a recent article, John Cooper defends the thesis that, for Socrates and his all successors, the philosophical life meant to live according to reason, understood as the exercising of one’s capacity for argument and analysis in pursuit of the truth (...) – which he conceives of as wisdom. It is our contention that an inclusion and close reading of Xenophon’s testimony casts doubt on Cooper’s unified model of Socrates and his conception of philosophy as a way of life. Xenophon’s Socrates, we argue, conceived of the philosophical life as essentially the exercise of one’s capacity for self-mastery. Moreover, as we interpret Xenophon, it is this self-mastery, not wisdom, which seems to form the basis or core of Socratic ethics. We try to show that for several of Socrates’ philosophical successors living a philosophical life meant something much closer to Xenophon’s picture of that life than the one Cooper describes. (shrink)

Anna-TeresaTymieniecka writes of a “dynamic skeleton for future fusions of sense” rising from the seemingly disjointed situation of philosophy and details how her phenomenology of life can put flesh on it. Examined here are her efforts to: uncover the deep-lying intelligibility of life by emphasizing the role of the logos of life in connection with meaning structures developed by Husserl; undertake a critique of phenomenological reason; delineate life’s path, not from cognition in isolation, but from (...) within the fullness of human functioning in all its complexity; give Husserl’s phenomenology a metaphysico-existential foundation; analyze the human creative process penetrating the very individualized meanderings of life; show how the creative logos reaches into communal/societal life and opens the way to spiritual and sacral horizons of experience. (shrink)

This book celebrates the investigative power of phenomenology to explore the phenomenological sense of space and time in conjunction with the phenomenology of intentionality, the invisible, the sacred, and the mystical. It examines the course of life through its ontopoietic genesis, opening the cosmic sphere to logos. The work also explores, on the one hand, the intellectual drive to locate our cosmic position in the universe and, on the other, the pull toward the infinite. It intertwines science and (...) its grounding principles with imagination in order to make sense of the infinite. This work is the first of a two-part work that contains papers presented at the 62nd International Congress of Phenomenology, The Forces of the Cosmos and the Ontopoietic Genesis of Life, held in Paris, France, August 2012. It features the work of scholars in such diverse disciplines as biology, anthropology, pedagogy, and psychology who philosophically investigate the cosmic origins of beingness. Coverage in this first part includes: Toward a New Enlightenment: Metaphysics as Philosophy of Life, Transformation in Phenomenology: Husserl and Tymieniecka, Biologically Organized Quantum Vacuum and the Cosmic Origin of Cellular Life, Plotinus "Enneads" and Self-Creation, The Creative Potential of Humor, Transcendental Morphology - A Phenomenological Interpretation of Human and Non-Human Cosmos, and Cognition and Emotion: From Dichotomy to Ambiguity.. (shrink)

This work celebrates the investigative power of phenomenology to explore the phenomenological sense of space and time in conjunction with the phenomenology of intentionality, the invisible, the sacred, and the mystical. It examines the course of life through its ontopoietic genesis, opening the cosmic sphere to logos. The work also explores, on the one hand, the intellectual drive to locate our cosmic position in the universe and, on the other, the pull toward the infinite. It intertwines science and (...) its grounding principles with imagination in order to make sense of the infinite. This book is the second of a two-part work that contains papers presented at the 62nd International Congress of Phenomenology, The Forces of the Cosmos and the Ontopoietic Genesis of Life, held in Paris, France, August 2012. It features the work of scholars in such diverse disciplines as biology, anthropology, pedagogy, and psychology who philosophically investigate the cosmic origins of beingness. Coverage in this second part includes: Communicative Virtues of A-T. Tymieniecka’s Phenomenology of Life, Intentionality of Time and Quantum – Phenomenological Sense of Space, Consciousness of the Cosmos: A Thought Experiment Through Philosophy and Science Fiction, The Cosmos and Bodily Life on Earth Elucidated within the Historicity of Human Existence, Novel as Path - Mamardashvili's Lectures on Proust, and Comments on Max Scheler's Thought and Philosophical Counseling. (shrink)

This paper brings Lyotard into connection with the discussions of Socrates in REPUBLIC concerning general libidinal economy and its relation to the logos in human beings. Since desire is always the desire to be amoral -- not to recognize the person as subject, but rather recognizing it as a market for the capital gain of desire, it is to be suspected that desire within the subject is the cause of so-called differends between subjects. This is what Republic is about.

In this post-modern darkness, the Phenomenology of Life and of the Human Condition excavates and brings to light the Logos of Life in its entire harmonizing interplay. In the present collection, which continues the long and winding itinerary of our previous probings, we first uncover the new field of the ontopoiesis of life by means of the self-individualisation of life, the key to its labyrinth (Tymieniecka). A network of the ontopoietic itineraries manifest life in (...) its innumerable perspectives: the constructive scanning (chronos and Kairos) are treated specifically by Eva Syristova, M. Bielawka, F. Bosio, and M.A. Cecilia. Individualising dynamisms of passions and the tying of the communal order by G. Bucher, R. Sweeney, A. Polis, A. Zvie Bar-On and others. The life-struggle for the light of the spirit by L. Sundararajan, I.R. Owen etc. The deep springs of mundaneity in human existence (moral sense, empathy, communication) by A. Luse, A. Ales Bello, J. Cibulka, J. Sivak, etc. (shrink)

This essay examines the theology of the nineteenth century Danish theologian and churchman Hans Lassen Martensen, focusing on the disputed question of the kenotic character of Martensen's Christology. A survey of the scholarship on this question is followed by discussions of Martensen's doctrine of God and his Christology, giving particular attention to his controversial notion of the double life of the Logos, i. e. the view that the Logos continued to enjoy an unlimited divine existence in the (...) sphere of eternity while simultaneously living a limited, earthly human existence for the duration of the incarnation. The essay concludes by arguing that Martensen has developed a form of Nestorianism and that his Christology can best be classified as ‘Nestorian kenoticism,’ i. e. an eccentric and problematic form of Christology which affirms the abandonment by the logos ensarkos of the divine attributes during the incarnation, while at the same time insisting that the logos asarkos remains unaffected and in full possession of his powers. (shrink)

이 글은 서구적 이성의 기초를 이루는 아리스토텔레스의 로고스 개념과 노장 사상에 대한 프랑수아 줄리앙의 비교분석을 논의한다. 로고스와 노장의 비교분석에서 줄리앙은 도가 사유의 운행과 내재성 개념을 통해 우회함으로써 로고스 개념을 낯설게 바라보고 그 편견을 제시한다. 그러나 이와 같은 우회적 작업은 단지 서구적 이성을 해체하는 의미를 갖는 것이 아니다. 서양철학에서 로고스를 기초로 확립해온 ‘대화’와 합의의 전통은 언어에 대한 노장 사유의 관점과 비교할 때 특히 정치적 차원에서 중요한 가치로서 다시 강조되어야 한다. 동시에 우리는 서구의 로고스 전통을 통해서는 삶의 가치로 내세울 수 없었던 ‘묵인’의 (...) 윤리를 노장 사유로부터 도출해낼 수 있다. 우리는 두 가치 가운데 어떤 하나를 포기할 수 없다. 과학의 발전을 추구하고 민주주의를 운영하고 있는 한 우리는 로고스의 전통을 견지해야겠지만, 우리의 삶을 지식과 정치의 장(場)으로 환원시킬 수도 없고 그런 시도를 해서도 안 된다. 로고스와 노장의 맞대면을 다루는 비교철학의 중요한 의미는 지식 및 정치와 묵인의 조화를 이루도록 실천적 과제를 남겨준 데 있을 것이다. (shrink)

Departing from Aristotle's two-fold definition of anthrōpos (human) as having logos and being political, the argument of this article is that human beings are always fundamentally political for Aristotle. This position challenges the view that ethical life is prior to or beyond the scope of political life. Aristotle's conception of the political nature of the human is developed through a reading of the linguistic argument at Politics 1.2; a careful treatment of autos, or self, in Aristotle; and (...) an examination of the political nature of anthrōpos in the context of Aristotle's candidates for the best life in Politics VII.l-3 and Nicomachean Ethics X.6-8. From this consideration the compatibility between Aristotle's claims that anthrōpos is fundamentally political and that the highest end of the human is achieved in theoria is maintained, since even in pursuing the theoretic life, human beings take up the practical question of what the best life is. (shrink)

In this essay, we examine certain key aspects of Nietzsche’s contribution to the ongoing debate concerning the nature and status of philosophical wisdom. We argue that, for Nietzsche, philosophical wisdom is tantamount to a “disruptive wisdom” which is expressed in a “permanent critique of ourselves” and our entire mode of existence. Philosophical wisdom, so construed, is not a matter of finding “metaphysical comfort” in consoling theories, images, or ideas; nor is it a matter of offering consolation for frustration and suffering. (...) Instead, it is about disrupting or rupturing those prevailing “human, all too human” myths and illusions that perpetuate human frustration and suffering—especially the myths and illusions associated with what Nietzsche terms the “hitherto reigning ascetic ideal” in the West. By disturbing our “dogmatic slumber” in common-place beliefs and values, Nietzsche’s “untimely” atopic philosophers of “disruptive wisdom” evoke the promise of alternate forms of humanity: new ways of valuing the earth and our life on it, new paradigms for a way of life to be achieved in the future. Disruptive philosophers and the wisdom they impart, help liberate and inspire us to experiment with new ways of thinking and valuing, all of which contribute, as Nietzsche sees it, to the reconstituting and “fashioning of the self” as a transformed “second nature”. (shrink)

Departing from Aristotle's two-fold definition of anthropos as having logos and being political, the argument of this article is that human beings are always fundamentally political for Aristotle. This position challenges the view that ethical life is prior to or beyond the scope of political life. Aristotle's conception of the political nature of the human is developed through a reading of the linguistic argument at Politics I.2; a careful treatment of autos, or self, in Aristotle; and an (...) examination of the political nature of anthropos in the context of Aristotle's candidates for the best life in Politics VII.1-3 and Nicomachean Ethics X.6-8. From this consideration the compatibility between Aristotle's claims that anthropos is fundamentally political and that the highest end of the human is achieved in theoria is maintained, since even in pursuing the theoretic life, human beings take up the practical question of what the best life is. (shrink)

A study of the influence of Platonism on two central areas of Early Christian doctrine, the relation of God the Son to the Father, and the mutual relations of the persons of the Trinity. In the former case, logos-theory and the figure of the demiurge are important; the latter, particularly Porphyry’s theory of the relation between Being, Life and Mind.

This paper explores Heraclitus’s linguistic method as a structural expression of his cosmological philosophy. Through an analysis of the various kinds of motion that Heraclitus describes, including the crucial motion between opposites, this essay delineates the meaning of ‘everliving fire’ as emblematic of his cosmos. The image of the synapse frames this analysis as it is simultaneously a motion and an expression uniting two poles; ‘syn’ also invokes Heraclitus’s notion of ‘shared logos’ as xynon, contrasted with human incomprehension as (...) axynetoi. The divine principle of Zeus and his thunderbolt serve as a source of motion; these motions of fire govern not only the cosmos, but human perception and thought. (shrink)

Prologue -- The Greek stones speak : toward an archaeology of consciousness -- Singing the muses' song : myth, wisdom, and speech -- Physis, kosmos, logos : presocratic thought and the emergence of nature-consciousness -- Sophistical wisdom, Socratic wisdom, and the political life -- Civic wisdom, divine wisdom : Socrates, Plato, and two visions for the Athenian citizen -- Speculative wisdom, practical wisdom : Aristotle and the culmination of Hellenic thought -- Epilogue.

This paper conducts an etymological investigation of the key words of globalization – bios, technē and logos. In addition to this, these keyword concepts are interpreted in the context of existential phenomenology. For this purpose not only Heidegger, who is a proponent of the existential interpretation of ancient concepts, but also Husserl, Gadamer, Lévinas, and Bakhtin are invoked. There are three theses presented in the paper: 1) our body is inseparable from the spiritual environment, where it matures by gaining (...) the spiritual functions of being spiritualized, named and realised; 2) the spiritual environment is at the same time technological, where technē is to be interpreted as an art of creation of environment’s interactive component such as the body and the spirit; 3) logos as the word and the name presupposes a text, i.e. a book written by our lives and the context, i.e. the interaction of texts as life-stories. The argument is given for the analogous interpretation of bios, technē and logos, i.e. that the three should be interpreted as interactive components of existential creation, which involve different planes of relationships between the spiritual environment and the life-story developing in it. Bios is related to the corporal aspect of existential creation: our life from birth to death is inseparable from the corporal temporal-spatial whole, which is involved in the spiritual environment. Logos reflects the linguistic-scriptural nature of the spiritual context of the environment. Technē is interpreted both as an art of creation of the existential whole and as an art of its inscription into this context. As a result, bios, technē and logos are interpreted in a way alternative to the discourse of globalization. (shrink)