amnesial fogs

foggy ideas about outer, as well as inner, histories...of external events and places, and ideas and traditions, lived by

"By Jupiter!" "Oh my Zeus!"

Jupiter

c. 1200, "supreme deity of the ancient Romans," from Latin Iupeter, from PIE *dyeu-peter- "god-father" (originally vocative, "the name naturally occurring most frequently in invocations" [Tucker]), from *deiw-os "god" (see Zeus) + peter "father" in the sense of "male head of a household" (see father). Cf. Greek Zeu pater, vocative of Zeus pater "Father Zeus;" Sanskrit Dyauspita "heavenly father." The planet name is attested from late 13c.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Jupiter

Zeus 

supreme god of the ancient Greeks, 1706, from Greek, from PIE *dewos- "god" (cf. Latin deus "god," Old Persian daiva- "demon, evil god," Old Church Slavonic deivai, Sanskrit deva-), from root *dyeu- "to gleam, to shine;" also the root of words for "sky" and "day" (see diurnal). The god-sense is originally "shining," but "whether as originally sun-god or as lightener" is not now clear.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Zeus&allowed_in_frame=0

mundanity

the modern global theology of earthly life: the icons and prayers of advertising

fearless theology?

theologians' assumptions that God is distant, distracted, or "dead"
or...
the unfear of the Lord is the beginning of theological erudition

everyone

those no One, are like everyone

bemythed theologians?

reading periodically for four decades in theologians' centuries-old descriptions of "God", His character, motivations, acts, intentions...

they seemed to be bemythed

   

if religion is the opiate of the masses...

...then what were the theologians, philosophers, metaphysicians, mystics, et al, on?
some heady Italian, German, Latin, French wines?

Jefferson and Nietzsche?

surely it would be interesting, and perhaps quite enlightening, to compare the reactions and relations to "Platonism", also in "Christianity", of Jefferson and Nietzsche!
 

Leibnitz on God?

what one learns of Leibnitz on God is Leibnitz
(but in this he is just representative of many others.)
 

divine self-deception?

if all religions past and present...
and all "spiritualities" however conceived...
plus all philosophies...

are really just mankind talking to itself ?...
 

skeptical?

a hopeful skeptic

the self-determination of persons?

Moscow (in)sights: so many other-determined.

   

modern misosophy...

which might also be termed philosophism...
do these expressions not well characterize much of what is taught academically/professionally as "philosophy"
 

be in-Formed

Platonically speaking:
one must be in-Formed to recognize the world in which we live
 

"Why for God's sake did that...?"

or for man's?

"God only knows!"

some saw an ancient first light...
     which others conceived ever repeating...

one sought on a mountain top...

outside a cave...

an other inside...

some looked into a mirroring macrocosm...

others up to an empyreal, throned Lord...

some for a loving Father...

one sought The Reason...

another a wholly, holy other...

one looked into an abyss...

others yet view into an ultra-deep field after an incomprehensible Bang...

The $$$ Habit Hobbit

The Hobbit: The (so-called) Desolation of Smaug...
in the main another action film, part two of three making as much money as possible
 

escape to a Sinai of ideas

travailing alone...seeking escape from the surrounding dearthly mundane mind...
in search of some sacred Sinai of veridical ideas
 

Bing's "Silent Night" Magic in Moscow

in the center of Moscow...
inside the new Galleria Shopping Center (http://moscow-gallery.com/)...
Bing Crosby's hymnal version of "Silent Night" sounds...
with prices 10x higher than in the USA, from whence much of Moscow's Christmas music comes...

the deep, mysterious consoling goodness inside both the 1818 Austrian-composed song and Bing's 1947 voice and version...

what do Russians make of it?...
besides atmosphere for Christmas and New Year's shopping season?...
 

oh my god!

Moses' ?
Plotinus' ?
Paley's?

statues in our fog

we live as if glimpsing religious statues and sculptures through thick drifting fogs
 

gnothi seauton?

we are asleep...
our religions, beliefs, "philosophies", etc like consoling (or nightmarish) dreams imagined real
 

the right eye

looking from right to left eyes, we indirectly briefly "encounter" each other stranger

and if a god dies, shall he live again?

a historic necropolis of Gods, ruling-consoling spirits, theologies and theodicies, holy books, mystics, philosophers,...
or are they rather merely asleep in cemeteries
 

World War words

the first world war, 1914
the First World War (UK), World War I (US), ~1939 (Time magazine, June 12, 1939)
the Second World War, World War II, 1939 (Time magazine, June 12, 1939)
(interesting facts on these terms in wikipedia, eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_war
 

somnambulism in ideas too

human daily somnambulism is of those working and living with body, soul and mind
 

social salvations in medias res

there are only temporary ideas and solutions to the best and right way to organize and understand one's life and live, physically and "philosophically".
like detailed unchiseled biographies on a dour yet boastful Edinburgh tombstone.

2 lessons from history...

Lesson # 1: humans do not learn from history.
Lesson # 2: humans do not realize they do not learn from history.

philosophy? philalethia? philomathy?

philosophy -- "wisdom"?

     but if few agree that there is and what is "wisdom" (as was not or less the mind of Pythagoras)

philalethia -- "truth"?

     but if the existence of "truth" is so disputed and disagreed...

philomathy -- learning

"In the beginning, Science..."

most every person who has ever watched a science program on the universe believes they have "seen" the "real" "beginning of the universe" in the increasingly sophisticated imagery of the Big Bang...
just as in times before in Christendom and its secularized descendants there was the Biblical inner imagination and Church imagery of the Creation of the World...

imagery has replaced words to the same effect, and probably the same reality and certainty

need a cultural history of the "beginning of the world"

the error of Er?

and if the widespread, collective assumption -- by which many millions actually 'live and move and have their being' -- that we are supposed (to be able) to enjoy life and world...is an idealistic error?

like an error of an errant living Er?
 

Plotinus and Moses?

quick answer to an educated, skeptical pessimist on their relationship...

they both claimed peak experiences, though one inner, the other on a mountain top in the Sinai...
and both are said to have experienced the Founder and CEO of the Universe, the Top "I"!
 

the future end of the "Big Bang"

as history shows, the current speculative scientific "mythology" of the Big Bang will pass, as have all such similar scientific "certainties"...though it may take a few more years than the mere seconds it took for the "creation" of the universe...
 

cultural imperialism?

like Alexander the Great's?

not another mundane day

striving to live so that "just another day" does not pass that way away

Centuries-Old Bible Study Maze: Enter at Your Own Risk

a serious study of the history of scholarship and study of the Bible is a kind of centuries-old idea-maze in which one enters at the risk of becoming lost, possibly escaping in despair, or having long lost any beliefs and faith one had upon entrance

Bibliocide by Human Causes

By the time the centuries long investigation of the Bible was complete, the patient was dead.
 

had the real Newton been known...

...how would he have been viewed by eg Voltaire, Goethe, Blake, Steiner...

the Bible's via dolorosa

one might speak of a centuries-long via dolorosa and Golgotha of the Bible in history

the Bible's eclipse by...

the earthly...
human reason...
the Enlightenment...

Review: Anthropography, Vol. 2 (?), Part 21.

"A fascinating tragicomedy...with love and death, sex and slaughter".
-- Moscow Review of Books, December 6, 2013, Stephenwolf

For those of you coming late, or confused by its characters and events, it is highly recommended to read and study the story leading up to now.

endless travel

why is it that people travel so often and so far and don't come back changed, or seem to even conceive to regret having not

Platonic pleasure

recognizing the shadows on the "cave's wall"
including one's own
   

Modern European Church Uncles

Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, and Otto may be seen as "Modern UnChurch Fathers", or let them be European Church Uncles, both in and out of the confessions, seminaries, university religious studies departments,...
yet however much of a "system" they claimed, or may be found or understood by scholars to have or to have not had (at least in their writings, teachings, or preachings, if not deep, personal beliefs and positions), their's are really just their own personal "theologies" of the world as they experienced and understood it...
more Modern European "Church Uncles" than Church Fathers.
though certainly suitable for academic consideration without end.
 

Huxley contra Pythagoras: philosophy after agnosis?

Huxley's agnosis may have been conceived mainly in contrast to Christianity, and Deism or Theism
but it is clear that "philosophy" can hardly have a substantial meaning when there is an assumption that there is no sophia, no wisdom, to be sought and found.

so many nice things!

in Soviet times so few nice things...

and the consciousness of most was, and now otherwise is, so determined.

Film review: "Paganini: The Devil's Actor"

Seems that a skilled violinist who looks like this...

needed, unsuccessfully, the inspiration of the devil to also act.

Rome did not fall in a day

that "Rome is falling" had been preached over the centuries since it did, while others were enjoying the descent!