Thursday, December 24, 2020
Plato’s Demiurge, Aristotle’s Prime Mover
The Complex Foundation of Primitive Societies
Wednesday, December 23, 2020
A Brief Picture of Man’s Journey From Objectivity to Subjectivity
Objectivity is the natural condition for all creatures on this planet, including man. The pre-civilizational man was naturally objective; he lacked the power to introspect and examine the essence of his being; the outside world was all that he could sense. It is not clear how the first mythological stories got created, but these stories inspired the rise of all kinds of cults and quasi-religious movements, which, in turn, led to the formation of the first tribal communities and then the city-states. The first philosophical theories were born in these primitive tribal communities and city-states. Now man’s mind was being torn between the objective and the subjective. Along with the outside world, there was a second world that he could sense. This was the wondrous world inside him, the world of his being. He was now capable of introspecting, rationalizing, judging, and, in the case of some men of advanced intellect, doubting what their senses were telling them about the outside world. Through the conflict between objectivity and subjectivity, man’s mind kept developing and, over a period of thousands of years, he became capable of creating modern civilization.
The Dating of the Ancient Hindu Texts
Tuesday, December 22, 2020
Western Metaphysics and History
On Derrida’s Reading
Who Decides Whether a Philosophy is Open or Closed?
Monday, December 21, 2020
Machiavelli on Savonarola, the Unarmed Prophet
Faust and the Devil
Sunday, December 20, 2020
The Search for the God of Atheists
On The Five Kinds of Liberals
There are five kinds of liberals in this world: useful idiots, hypocritical idiots, immoral idiots, elitist idiots, and lying idiots.
Saturday, December 19, 2020
The Decline and Fall of Hollywood
The Nature of Philosophy
Friday, December 18, 2020
The Subtle Coup d’état of 21st Century
Wisdom is Wiser than Technical Philosophy
Thursday, December 17, 2020
Intellectuals and Barbarians: Poison and Medicine
Krishna’s First Line in the Mahabharata
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
On Good Philosophy
The Divine is Compassionless
The Secret Global Society of Liberals
Tuesday, December 15, 2020
The Fall of Modernity (Umberto Eco’s Words)
On Socialism’s No Exit Clause
Monday, December 14, 2020
Definition of a Philosopher
Media’s Reverse-Midas Touch
Midas had the ability to transform anything he touched into gold. But the mainstream media has a reverse-Midas touch; whatever story they touch transforms into a pile of lies and propaganda.
Sunday, December 13, 2020
Veda Vyasa and the Writing of the Mahabharata
Sage Veda Vyasa is the most prolific thinker, complier, and composer in ancient Hindu theology and philosophy. He classified (“vyasa” means classified) the four Vedas; this explains his name Veda Vyasa. He is the composer of the epic Mahabharata; according to traditional accounts, his composition of the Mahabharata contained 100000 verses, but the extant editions of the Mahabharata do not contain that many verses—the critical edition of the Mahabharata, developed by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI), contains around 89000 verses (excluding the Harivamsa). After finishing the Mahabharata, Veda Vyasa became engaged with compiling the eighteen Maha Puranas which contain 400000 verses. Another name of Veda Vyasa is Krishna Dvaipayana—the term “Krishna” in his name indicates that he was dark skinned, and the term “Dvaipayana” indicates he was born in an island (“Dvaipa” means island).
In some versions of the Mahabharata, it is stated that since Veda Vyasa was intimately acquainted with all the characters in the epic, he was asked by Lord Brahma to write the story. Vyasa said that the story was long and complex, and he would require the assistance of a scribe. Lord Brahma then suggested the name of Lord Ganesha. But Lord Ganesha said that he would accept the task on one condition: Vyasa would have to dictate without any break. To ensure that his composing of the verses would match the speed of Lord Ganesha’s swift writing, Vyasa put forward the counter-condition that Lord Ganesha would write only after he grasped the meaning of the verses. After every few verses, Vyasa would throw a difficult verse and in the time that it took for Lord Ganesha to grasp its meaning, Vyasa would compose the several new verses in his mind. This explains why the Mahabharata verses are a mix of easy and difficult ones.
The Two Types of Racketeers
Saturday, December 12, 2020
The Immanentization of the Past
The Fearsome Mainstream Media
Friday, December 11, 2020
Vampires and the Political Cabal
The vampires feed on the blood of normal humans but they get vaporized in sunlight; they can hunt and thrive only in the darkness. The counterpart of the vampires in the real world is the cabal of corrupt politicians, crony capitalists, and nihilist intellectuals—they too feed on the blood of normal humans and they too thrive in the darkness, when there is lack of transparency. Sunlight is the mortal enemy of the vampires, and transparency is the mortal enemy of the cabal. The vampires cannot stop the sun from rising, and so during daytime, they hide indoors, in caves, forests, or their castles, but if the members of the cabal win in the elections, they gain the power to destroy transparency by subverting the freedom of the people and corrupting the legal and administrative systems. The vampires are not real; the cabal is a reality in every nation.
The Quest for Mathematical Philosophy: Descartes, Spinoza, and Kant
Thursday, December 10, 2020
The Ancient Problem of Universals is Irresolvable
While the problem of universals become a major issue in the Middle Ages, the controversy on this subject has been raging since the Ancient times—it stems form the conflict between three positions: realism, nominalism, and conceptualism. In the late Middle Ages, the realists saw themselves as Platonic-Realists, but in the twentieth century, they started using the label of Aristotelians. Philosophy has benefitted from the rise of nominalism in the Middle Ages—the nominalist ideas of Roscellinus, Abelard, and Ockham played an important role in pushing philosophy towards scholasticism, which in turn has led to modern thought. The conceptualism school came of age in the early Modern period when it was accepted by most major philosophers: Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. Kant, for instance, defines his position as transcendental idealism, which considers the universals as ideas in man’s mind. Each of the three positions, realism, nominalism, and conceptualism, has spawned sub-schools which have contributed to the development of philosophical thought. Each side considers itself as the fount of reason, logic, and science and brands the other sides as irrational, illogical, and unscientific. I am biased towards the realist school (Platonic-Realism or Aristotelianism), but the truth is that problem of the universals is irresolvable. There is simply no way of proving or disproving the existence of entities which are indifferent to language and are beyond the limits of constructivist capacities of the human senses and mind. In Hindu philosophy, the universals have been debated since the Vedic age (between 600 BC and 1500 BC)—the Vedas and the Upanishads contain several verses on why we consider some objects as certain kind of objects. The six Hindu schools of philosophy—Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Mīmāṃsā and Vedanta—have arguments on various realist, conceptualist, and nominalist positions.
Heidegger’s Fundamental Question
Wednesday, December 9, 2020
The Philosophers and Their Methods of Philosophizing
Kant’s Notion of Transcendental Apperception
Tuesday, December 8, 2020
The Pitfalls of Total Freedom
On Vedic and Upanishadic Philosophy
Monday, December 7, 2020
Mismanaged Election Leads to Dental Problems
On The Anu-Gita
Sunday, December 6, 2020
The Story of Dushyanta and Shakuntala
The Banana Peel Republics
Saturday, December 5, 2020
Victory Often Comes to the Lying Side
Draupadi’s Rejection of Karna: from Ramesh Chandra Dutt’s Mahabharata
Friday, December 4, 2020
The Unending Political Battles
The First Verse of the Mahabharata
Thursday, December 3, 2020
Theism and Liberty
The Concept of Svayambhu
Wednesday, December 2, 2020
The American Elections
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” ~ Lord Acton’s best known line. In retrospect, it becomes obvious that the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 has had a negative impact on the USA—it resulted in the USA acquiring absolute power over the world and becoming absolutely corrupted. Now the situation is so bad that the Americans can’t even hold a proper election. In the recent election, there are so many glaring anomalies in the voting and vote-counting processes that you need to be a truly gullible and ignorant (or biased and corrupt) person to believe in the results that the mainstream media is touting—the official results are yet to be declared. Only seventeen years ago, the Americans had marched into Iraq with the purported aim of creating a democratic utopia there—they wanted to teach the Iraqis how to hold proper elections, but in 2020, they have botched their own election. Henceforth, the USA will not have the moral authority to preach democratic values to other nations.
The Concept of “Sat-cid-ananda”
Tuesday, December 1, 2020
The Metaphysics of Shankara and Kant
The Philosophical Mind Versus the Non-philosophical Mind
It cannot be philosophically demonstrated that things exist outside the perceivers mind and that the information received from the senses is a reflection of the true reality and not an illusion. But a non-philosophical mind is never plagued with doubts about the reality of existence—it plays the game of life without questioning the senses. It’s only the philosophical mind that is capable of doubting the senses and treating existence with skepticism. A philosophical mind is a rare entity; majority of the people are non-philosophical—they plunge headlong into the game of living the life of laborers, farmers, soldiers, scientists, businessmen, politicians, etc., without being plagued with philosophical doubt. The tendency towards philosophical doubt is not only the trait of the philosophical mind but also the fountainhead of philosophy.