Download or read book Pherecydes an early Western Philosopher written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2019-03-27 with total page 7 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like Plato and Thales, Pherecydes obtained his knowledge from the secret books of the Phoenicians. Including a full refutation of the charges levelled against the sage by Madame Blavatsky.
Download or read book A History of Western Philosophy Beginnings to Plotinus written by Ralph McInerny and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Early Greek Philosophy Western Greek thinkers pt 1 written by André Laks and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The fragments and testimonia of the early Greek philosophers (often labeled the Presocratics) have always been not only a fundamental source for understanding archaic Greek culture and ancient philosophy but also a perennially fresh resource that has stimulated Western thought until the present day. This new systematic conception and presentation of the evidence differs in three ways from Hermann Diels’s groundbreaking work, as well as from later editions: it renders explicit the material’s thematic organization; it includes a selection from such related bodies of evidence as archaic poetry, classical drama, and the Hippocratic corpus; and it presents an overview of the reception of these thinkers until the end of antiquity. Volume I contains introductory and reference materials essential for using all other parts of the edition. Volumes II and III include chapters on ancient doxography, background, and the Ionians from Pherecydes to Heraclitus. Volumes IV and V present western Greek thinkers from the Pythagoreans to Hippo. Volumes VI and VII comprise later philosophical systems and their aftermath in the fifth and early fourth centuries. Volumes VIII and IX present fifth-century reflections on language, rhetoric, ethics, and politics (the so-called sophists and Socrates) and conclude with an appendix on philosophy and philosophers in Greek drama."--
Download or read book Early Greek Philosophy Western Greek thinkers pt 2 written by André Laks and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The fragments and testimonia of the early Greek philosophers (often labeled the Presocratics) have always been not only a fundamental source for understanding archaic Greek culture and ancient philosophy but also a perennially fresh resource that has stimulated Western thought until the present day. This new systematic conception and presentation of the evidence differs in three ways from Hermann Diels’s groundbreaking work, as well as from later editions: it renders explicit the material’s thematic organization; it includes a selection from such related bodies of evidence as archaic poetry, classical drama, and the Hippocratic corpus; and it presents an overview of the reception of these thinkers until the end of antiquity. Volume I contains introductory and reference materials essential for using all other parts of the edition. Volumes II and III include chapters on ancient doxography, background, and the Ionians from Pherecydes to Heraclitus. Volumes IV and V present western Greek thinkers from the Pythagoreans to Hippo. Volumes VI and VII comprise later philosophical systems and their aftermath in the fifth and early fourth centuries. Volumes VIII and IX present fifth-century reflections on language, rhetoric, ethics, and politics (the so-called sophists and Socrates) and conclude with an appendix on philosophy and philosophers in Greek drama."--
Download or read book Presocratics written by James Warren and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-05 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The earliest phase of philosophy in Europe saw the beginnings of cosmology and rational theology, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethical and political theory. It saw the development of a wide range of radical and challenging ideas: from Thales' claim that magnets have souls and Parmenides' account that there is only one unchanging existent to the development of an atomist theory of the physical world. This general account of the Presocratics introduces the major Greek philosophical thinkers from the sixth to the middle of the fifth century BC. It explores how we might go about reconstructing their views and understanding the motivation and context for their work as well as highlighting the ongoing philosophical interest of their often surprising claims. Separate chapters are devoted to each of the major Presocratic thinkers, including Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Leucippus and Democritus, and an introductory chapter sets the scene by describing their intellectual world and the tradition through which their philosophy has been transmitted and interpreted. With a useful chronology and guide to further reading, the book is an ideal introduction for the student and general reader.
Download or read book History of Western Philosophy written by Bertrand Russell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 745 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of all time, the History of Western Philosophy is a dazzlingly unique exploration of the ideologies of significant philosophers throughout the ages - from Plato and Aristotle through to Spinoza, Kant and the twentieth century. Written by a man who changed the history of philosophy himself, this is an account that has never been rivalled since its first publication over 60 years ago. This special collector's edition features:a brand new foreword by Anthony Gottlieb, who is Executive Editor of The Econ ...
Download or read book A History of Religious Ideas Volume 2 written by Mircea Eliade and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-12-16 with total page 581 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In volume 2 of this monumental work, Mircea Eliade continues his magisterial progress through the history of religious ideas. The religions of ancient China, Brahmanism and Hinduism, Buddha and his contemporaries, Roman religion, Celtic and German religions, Judaism, the Hellenistic period, the Iranian syntheses, and the birth of Christianity—all are encompassed in this volume.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Classical Philosophy written by Donald J. Zeyl and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-23 with total page 607 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Encyclopedia of Classical Philosophy is a reference work on the philosophy of Greek and Roman antiquity. It includes subjects and figures from the dawn of philosophy in Ionia in the 6th century BC to the demise of the Academy in Athens in the 6th century AD. Scholarly study of the texts and philosophical thought of this period has been, during the last half of the 20th century, amazingly productive and has become increasingly sophisticated. The 269 articles in the encyclopedia reflect this development. While the majority of the articles are devoted to individual figures, many of the articles are thematic surveys of broad areas such as epistemology, ethics, and political thought. Some articles focus on particular concepts that evoked significant philosophical treatment by the ancients, and have proved central to later thought. Other articles treat fields that are no longer considered part of philosophy proper, such as mathematics and science. There are articles examining areas of intellectual or cultural endeavour, such as poetry or rhetoric, or genres of philosophical expression, such as dialogue and diatribe. Still others describe the historical developments of philosophical schools and traditions. The encyclopedia includes a chronology and guide to further reading. Best Reference Source
Download or read book The noble genius of Paracelsus written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2018-03-25 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paracelsus was the most wondrous intellect of his age and original thinker. Bold creator of chemical medicines, founder of courageous parties, ever victorious in controversy. He belonged to those great minds who have created a new mode of thinking on the natural existence of things. More than one pathologist, chemist, homœopathist, and magnetist has quenched his thirst for knowledge in his books. Alkahest, a Paracelsian term for which there is no end to the assumed explanations, is Chaos, i.e., primordial undifferentiated substance, containing within itself the essence of all that goes to make up man, including the “breath of life” itself in a latent state, ready to be awakened. Chaos is another name for Æther, the celestial virgin and spiritual mother of every form and being in the manifested world. Alkahest was used by Paracelsus to denote the menstruum or universal solvent that is capable of reducing all things. But the real alkahest is the all-pervading Divine Spirit of the higher Initiate, not the all-geist of the inferior Alchemist. Paracelsus was the greatest chemist of his age and peer of modern scientists. But he exhausted his ingenuity in endless transpositions of letters and abbreviations of words and sentences. For example, when he wrote sutratur he meant tartar; and by mutrin, nitrum! By mercurius vitæ, he meant the living spirit or aura of silver, not the quicksilver. Paracelsus declared that the affinity between stars and man is due to their identical composition. Embodied existence is the outcome of reciprocal sympathies and antipathies between the starry sky and man. Our body comes from terrestrial elements; the thinking principle, from the stars. It is not the spirits of heaven and hell that are the masters of nature but the Spirit of Man which is concealed in him, as the fire is concealed in the flint. Every living being possesses his own celestial power and is closely allied with heaven. The fact that everyone affects another and all, mutually and reciprocally, is evidence of the universal sympathy and antipathy that exists between everyone and everything. Éliphas Lévi quotes approvingly the doctrine of Paracelsus that every man, animal, and plant bears external and internal evidence of the influences dominant at the moment of germinal development. Pure magic stems from the imperial will of man. Will is neither spirit nor substance but everlasting ideation. Determined will is the beginning of all magical operations. Paracelsus is the father of modern magic and proponent of the occult physics of the Kabbalah and Magnetism. True Magic is occult wisdom; reason, the folly of man. No armour can protect against Black Magic, for it injures the inward spirit of life. But there is a divine power in every man, which is to rule his life, and which no one can influence for evil, not even the greatest magician. Let men bring their lives under its guidance, and they have nothing to fear from man or devil. The great Adept removed disease by applying a healthy organism to the afflicted part. Watch out! A would-be healer, who is physically or morally ill, not only fails to heal but often imparts his illness to his patient, thus robbing him of what strength he may have. The divine spirit is a great thing, so great that no one can fully express its greatness. It requires no conjuration or ceremonies. Circle-making and incense burning are all tomfoolery and temptation by which only evil spirits are attracted, says Paracelsus. If we only knew the power of the heart, nothing would be impossible for us. The whole world is one living organism and outcome of a single creative effort. There is no death and nothing “dead” throughout nature. Neither the form of man, nor that of any animal, plant or stone has ever been “created,” and it is only on this plane of ours that it commenced becoming, by expanding from within without, from the most sublimated and supersensuous essence into its grossest appearance in the abyss of matter. According to the Hermetico-Kabbalistic philosophy of Paracelsus, it is Yliaster that evolved out of its “chaotic” self a new Kosmos. Yliaster is the universal matrix of Kosmos, the Father-Mother within. It is beyond space, time, and intellectual comprehension. Yliaster is Anima Mundi, the noumenon of Astral Light, and a cosmic veil between earth and the waters of Space that sprang out of Chaos. The Swiss-German Adept rediscovered some of the lost secrets of the Phrygian priests and the Asclepieia. He was a learned Theosophist and a far-famed physician-Occultist. He taught that Fire, i.e., the Spirit of the Flame, is the highest God. The Hermetic Fire is a ray of the One eternal and infinite Flame that starts from, and is immediately reabsorbed into, the parent essence. The Spirit of the Flame is invisible to all except to the eyes of another immortal Spirit. The occult properties of medicinal plants and minerals, and of the curative powers of certain things in nature, are far more important and useful than metaphysical and psychological Occultism or Theophany.
Download or read book Shaman and Sage written by Michael Horton and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2024-05-28 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first volume of Michael Horton’s magisterial intellectual history of “spiritual but not religious” as a phenomenon in Western culture Discussions of the rapidly increasing number of people identifying as “spiritual but not religious” tend to focus on the past century. But the SBNR phenomenon and the values that underlie it may be older than Christianity itself. Michael Horton reveals that the hallmarks of modern spirituality—autonomy, individualism, utopianism, and more—have their foundations in Greek philosophical religion. Horton makes the case that the development of the shaman figure in the Axial Age—particularly its iteration among Orphists—represented a “divine self.” One must realize the divinity within the self to break free from physicality and become one with a panentheistic unity. Time and time again, this tradition of divinity hiding in nature has arisen as an alternative to monotheistic submission to a god who intervenes in creation. This first volume traces the development of a utopian view of the human individual: a divine soul longing to break free from all limits of body, history, and the social and natural world. When the second and third volumes are complete, students and scholars will consult The Divine Self as the authoritative guide to the “spiritual but not religious” tendency as a recurring theme in Western culture from antiquity to the present.
Download or read book Introduction to Presocratics written by Giannis Stamatellos and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-04-17 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INTRODUCTION TO PRESOCRATICS “The general public and scholars alike will find Introduction to Presocratics stimulating, engaging and exceptionally useful. Stamatellos’ intriguing and illuminating theme-based approach to this subject and his inclusion of a fresh translation of all the major fragments make this book a ‘must have’ for anyone interested in Presocratic philosophy.” Robert D. Luginbill, University of Louisville “An excellent introduction to early Greek philosophy – full of information, yet eminently readable and clearly organised. The thematic treatment brings new perspectives and fresh philosophical insights.” Andrew Smith, University College Dublin “Surveying the key surviving texts theme by theme sooner than man by man, Stamatellos offers the beginner clear and comprehensive insight into the compelling inquiries of the early Greek thinkers.” Susan Prince, University of Cincinnati “Giannis Stamatellos’ book is a very elegant and finely structured introduction to the fascinating beginnings of Western thought. He has succeeded in making a rather difficult and complex topic extremely accessible and stimulating.” Mark Beck, University of South Carolina Despite what is commonly taught, Western philosophy did not begin with Socrates. The roots of Western philosophy and science, in fact, run much deeper than this watershed philosophical figure – to a series of innovative Greek thinkers of the 6th and 5th century BCE. Introduction to Presocratics presents a succinct overview of early Greek thought by following a thematic exposition of the topics and enquiries explored by the first philosophers of the Western tradition. Ionian figures such as Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and Pythagoras are covered; Eleatics such as Parmenides and Zeno; and Pluralists or Neo-Ionians such as Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus. Key areas of Presocratic philosophy are addressed, including principles, cosmos, being, soul, knowledge, and ethics. A brief account of the legacy and reception of the Presocratics in later philosophical traditions is also included. Also featured is an original translation of the main Presocratic fragments by renowned classics professor Rosemary Wright. Introduction to Presocratics offers illuminating insights into the true pioneers of philosophical thought in the Western tradition.
Download or read book The Sacred Tree written by Carole M. Cusack and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2011-05-25 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fundamental nature of the tree as a symbol for many communities reflects the historical reality that human beings have always interacted with and depended upon trees for their survival. Trees provided one of the earliest forms of shelter, along with caves, and the bounty of trees, nuts, fruits, and berries, gave sustenance to gatherer-hunter populations. This study has concentrated on the tree as sacred and significant for a particular group of societies, living in the ancient and medieval eras in the geographical confines of Europe, and sharing a common Indo-European inheritance, but sacred trees are found throughout the world, in vastly different cultures and historical periods. Sacred trees feature in the religious frameworks of the Ghanaian Akan, Arctic Altaic shamanic communities, and in China and Japan. The power of the sacred tree as a symbol is derived from the fact that trees function as homologues of both human beings and of the cosmos. This study concentrates the tree as axis mundi (hub or centre of the world) and the tree as imago mundi (picture of the world). The Greeks and Romans in the ancient world, and the Irish, Anglo-Saxons, continental Germans and Scandinavians in the medieval world, all understood the power of the tree, and its derivative the pillar, as markers of the centre. Sacred trees and pillars dotted their landscapes, and the territory around them derived its meaning from their presence. Unfamiliar or even hostile lands could be tamed and made meaningful by the erection of a monument that replicated the sacred centre. Such monuments also linked with boundaries, and by extension with law and order, custom and tradition. The sacred tree and pillar as centre symbolized the stability of the cosmos and of society. When the Pagan peoples of Europe adopted Christianity, the sacred trees and pillars, visible signs of the presence of the gods in the landscape, were popular targets for axe-wielding saints and missionaries who desired to force the conversion of the landscape as well as the people. Yet Christianity had its own tree monument, the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified, and which came to signify resurrected life and the conquest of eternal death for the devout. As European Pagans were converted to Christianity, their tree and pillar monuments were changed into Christian forms; the great standing crosses of Anglo-Saxon northern England played many of the same roles as Pagan sacred trees and pillars. Irish and Anglo-Saxons Christians often combined the image of the Tree of Life from the Garden of Eden with Christ on the cross, to produce a Christian version of the tree as imago mundi.
Download or read book A chant for the neophytes after their last initiation written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2018-01-12 with total page 11 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chant sung over the entranced bodies of the mystai or neophytes who, after passing through the trial of their last initiation, were made Epoptai.
Download or read book Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy Volume XVI 1998 written by C. C. W. Taylor and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998-12-17 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy is an annual volume of original articles, which may be of substantial length, on a wide range of topics in ancient philosophy, and review articles of major books. The 1998 volume is broad in scope, as ever, featuring four pieces on Aristotle, two on Plato, and one each on Xenophanes, the Atomists, and Plutarch. 'An excellent periodical.' Mary Margaret MacKenzie, Times Literary Supplement 'This ... annual collection ... has become standard reading among specialists in ancient philosophy ... Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy continues to reflect the vigour of a challenging but vital sub-discipline within Classical Studies and Philosophy.' Brad Inwood, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Download or read book Thomas Taylor the English Platonist written by and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2023-04-12 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Shankara was a contemporary of Patanjali and his Chela written by Tallapragada Subba Row, Boris Mikhailovich de Zirkoff and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The First Philosophers written by Robin Waterfield and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These first philosophers paved the way for the work of Plato and Aristotle - and hence for the whole of Western thought. This is a unique and invaluable collection of the works of the Presocratics and the Sophists. Waterfield brings together the works of these early thinkers with brilliant new translation and exceptional commentary. This is the ideal anthology for the student of this increasingly appreciated field of classical philosophy.
