Tag: Arthur Schopenhauer

Children of a lesser god: Gnostic elements in the Nag Hammadi manuscripts

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Christianity, Esotericism, History of Religions

The discovery of an entire "Gnostic library" in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945, revealed to the world the "cosmic pessimism" of some of the earliest Christian congregations in the Near East, based on the ontological difference between the unknowable God- Father of the Synoptic Gospels and the "God of this world", a figure who has notable correspondences but also sensitive distinctions with the Platonic Demiurge.

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Thomas Mann, the nocturnal side of reason and the depth of the Myth

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Anthropology, Philosophy, Italian Literature, Mito, Characters, Psychology, History of Religions

65 years ago, on August 12, 1955, Thomas Mann, one of the most influential storytellers and thinkers of the first half of the twentieth century, left this world. Here we see how - taking a cue from Freud, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer - Mann considered the journey to the mythical and archetypal abysses of man as a return to the past, but with the prospect of delivering it, purified of irrational error, to the future.

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The human being as multiplicity: mask, "doppelgรคnger" and puppet

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Esotericism, Philosophy, Italian Literature, Mito, Characters, Psychology

Since modern man has dramatically realized that the unity of the human being is an illusion some of the highest minds of his consortium have sought - in a uncanny game of masks, mirrors and dolls - to understand how to integrate one's infinite personalities and overcome the existential nihilism that such masks potentially offer: from ETA Hoffmann's โ€œThe Sandmanโ€ and EA Poe's โ€œWilliam Wilsonโ€ to Hermann Hesse's โ€œThe Steppe Wolfโ€; from the contemporary cinema of Roman Polanski and David Lynch to Thomas Ligotti's "marionette metaphysics" and HP Lovecraft's "cosmic horror".

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Luitzen EJ Brouwer: when Mathematics meets Mysticism

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Characters, Science

The most advanced physics now gives reason to 'heretical' scientists like Brouwer, who in his work tried to reconcile mathematics and mysticism, leading him to perspectives that are nothing short of unusual, albeit influenced by the Pythagorean School of ancient Hellas and by oriental mystics.

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