Philosophy of Power

Power is an idea that everybody is familiar with. Or so it seems. Power incites awe, fear, praise, submission, pain, dominance, and glory. Those who strive for it end up being devoured by it. Those who do not desire power, are most suited to wield it. In many ways, power represents an elusive mystery, an unknown dark energy, not fully comprehended. Since antiquity, many brilliant thinkers have given explanations and justifications for power. A wide range of angles and perspectives can be employed in order to study power. This course journeys through the works of the most profound thinkers of power. Once completed, all conventional illusions pertaining to power shall be shattered so that we can see it for it really is.

The Intellectual Life

The Intellectual Life based in leisure reimagined for the 21st Century.

God and the Between: The Philosophy of William Desmond

Lecture 1 The Modern and Postmodern challenge to the sacred. The decadent dichotomies of modernity, and the hermeneutics of suspicion from postmodernity. Lecture 2 We will examine the Desmond’s central ideas about the fourfold sense of Being within which we will start to examine his notion of the Between, also called the metaxological , and its connections to transjectivity. realization of Being, transcendence and God. Lecture 3. Desmond, supplemented by the cognitive science of religion, and religion. Here we will explore Desmond’s account of religion and the experience of the divine/sacred. Lecture 4. Desmond and God. We will discuss the relationship in Desmond between transcendence, transjectivity, Desmond is oriented to Christianity but not a Christian.God is not a substance-subject is a relational non-duality. Lecture 5: In order to answer this we will turn to the work Duns who presents Desmond’s philosophy as spiritual exercises within philosophy as a way of life.