In this paper, the principal question is the following: How and to what extent can Nishida’s basho (“place”), as it is outlined in his famous treatise Basho (1926), taken together with the ...“adjoining” essay The Unsolved Issue of Consciousness (1927), be understood and interpreted from Plato’s and/or Plotinus’ (i.e. Neoplatonic) philosophical viewpoint—and, possibly, also vice versa? What do Nishida’s conception (or rather intuition) of basho on the one hand, and Plato’s quite “vague” concept of chóra in Timaeus and/or Plotinus’ first hypóstasis “the One” on the other, have in common? The main formal similarity between basho and “the One” is that they cannot be “predicated” (in the Aristotelian sense) by anything else—or, to put it in Platonic terms, both are absolutely transcendent. However, there are also several important differences, mainly because of the different frames of thought, which are discussed in this paper.
The Oration on the Dignity of Man makes a claim, characteristic for the Renaissance, that the dignity of man, the real “excellency of human nature,” is not present in any specific human quality or ...ability. Neither is it present in the role of the human soul as the “tie of the world” (copula mundi), as Marsilio Ficino has taught. Even higher than this eminent human role in the world is the freedom of man to choose his role and task himself. At the same time, Pico believes that Man was created as the image of God, in the sense that no man is determined in advance: human free will reflects God’s free will in creation. From the point of view of the mainstream modern dualism, this is a paradox, even a contradiction. This paper argues the opposite: that the human free will is even nowadays, not less than in the Renaissance period, compatible with the belief in God. However, this is only the case if God (being transcendent or immanent to the world) does not command anything, if God does not demand anything – except love. Violence and killing are eo ipso prohibited, especially in the name of faith. Therefore, freedom and faith are perfectly compatible. Even more, modern humans are fatally unfree either in the secular “radicalization” of faith or in the atheistic secularization of the world. Unfree due to their existence (Dasein), enslaved by the Angst of “mere nothing.”
Avtor izhaja iz platonskega prepričanja, da je spominjanje (anámnesis) bistveno za sámospoznanje, namreč kot možnost presežne celovitosti duše. Ob prepletanju esejistično ubesedenih osebnih ...spominskih izkustev in teoretsko filozofskih premislekov je v središču pozornosti odnos med spominskimi »predmeti« oziroma predstavami in subjektom, tj. osebo, ki se spominja. V osrednjem delu članka avtor naniza nekaj ključnih spominskih »aporij«, ki segajo od starega Egipta in Grčije do moderne dobe, od klasične mnemotehnike do hipotetičnih »kvazispominov« ter do sodobnega digitalnega spomina, ki vse bolj izpodriva živo človeško spominjanje. Kljub temu pa avtor izraža upanje, da duša tudi dandanes zmore s spominskim »iskanjem izgubljenega časa« ohranjati svojo celovitost – kot živi duh, kot oseba.
The Renaissance rediscovered the soul as the focus of the universe. Marsilio Ficino calls the soul the “bond of the world” (copula mundi), because it connects the earth and the heaven, immanence and ...transcendence, time and eternity. On the other hand, the centre of the world becomes more and more relative during the Renaissance period, and individual souls live more and more in their particular times and spaces. In Renaissance paintings, a soul's point of view is determined by perspective, as developed by Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Piero della Francesca et al., and the very position of the eye also features as a “symbolic form” (Erwin Panofsky). However, above each individual and “mobile” soul there are the wings of the “motionless” angel: super animam mobilem est immobilis angelus, as Ficino says in his renaissance Christianity, in reviewing the Platonic-Gnostic myth of the omnipresent angelic gaze. In the archetype of the angel Ficino perceives a metaphor for the all-knowing Intellect, towards which the human soul ascends. Following the iconology of Ernst Gombrich, this paper also takes notice of the influence of Ficino's philosophy on Botticelli's paintings.
A study of the phenomena of shadows, meant in a broader sense as 'symbolic forms'. The shadow is a less real, 'surface' replica of some more real form. From the Platonic point of view, empirical ...objects are 'shadows of ideas', while from the modern 'natural' point of view, shadows are seen and conceived primarily as 'weaker' replicas of bodies, which give evidence of their material reality. In the first three essays here, several topics from the Ancient Egypt and Greece to modern arts and sciences are considered, while in the fourth essay, the contemporary virtual reality, cyber-technology and the internet as our parallel 'shadow world' are discussed from the philosophical point of view.
Ko je Galilej s prvim astronomskim daljnogledom opazoval Luno, so njegovo pozornost še posebno pritegnile sence na njeni površini. Kot je zapisal v Zvezdnem glasniku (1610), je namreč iz senc ...razbral, da so na Luni gore in doline, ravno tako kot na Zemlji. To spoznanje je imelo daljnosežne posledice, s katerimi se krščanski teologi sprva niso hoteli sprijazniti, kajti Zemlja in Luna sta postali »enakovredni« nebesni obli, ki druga drugi dajeta oziroma »odsevata« sončno svetlobo. Ko so pred petdesetimi leti astronavti odprave Apollo pristali na Luni in z lastnimi očmi videli, kako na obzorju vzhaja Zemlja (gl. fotografijo Earthrise), jih je videnje tega našega »drugega-istega« sveta močno prevzelo ...
Avtor izhaja iz platonskega prepričanja, da je spominjanje (anámnesis) bistveno za sámospoznanje, namreč kot možnost presežne celovitosti duše. Ob prepletanju esejistično ubesedenih osebnih ...spominskih izkustev in teoretsko filozofskih premislekov je v središču pozornosti odnos med spominskimi »predmeti« oziroma predstavami in subjektom, tj. osebo, ki se spominja. V osrednjem delu članka avtor naniza nekaj ključnih spominskih »aporij«, ki segajo od starega Egipta in Grčije do moderne dobe, od klasične mnemotehnike do hipotetičnih »kvazispominov« ter do sodobnega digitalnega spomina, ki vse bolj izpodriva živo človeško spominjanje. Kljub temu pa avtor izraža upanje, da duša tudi dandanes zmore s spominskim »iskanjem izgubljenega časa« ohranjati svojo celovitost – kot živi duh, kot oseba.
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