Presocratic Theology

Author(s):  
T. M. Robinson

If in the context of early and classical Greek thought, the term “theology” is taken to mean “of God/gods/the gods and his/their putative relationship, causal and directive, to the world and its operations, and to ourselves within that world,” or something of that order, the first ascription of such a notion to a Presocratic philosopher is to be found in Aristotle's comment that “Thales thought that all things are full of gods”. The Presocratic period ends with no neat causal sequence. If one train of thinking was moving in the direction of a divinely guided, teleologically explicable universe, another was moving in exactly the opposite direction. For the atomists Democritus and Leucippus, the ever-changing universe is an infinity of space in which, across eternity, chance agglomerations of ever-moving atoms produce and will forever go on producing those contents of the universe that we call realities, from gazelles to galaxies.

1970 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Mora Zahonero

Resumen: La doctrina conocida como «unidad del ser» tiene, en Ibn ʿArabī, su contrapunto en la visión dinámica de la creación continua o nueva creación, la cual postula que el cosmos, y todo cuanto contiene, es creado y recreado sin cesar a cada instante. Se trata de una visión caleidoscópica de la existencia que se enmarca dentro de lo que se ha dado en llamar «filosofías del acto», y más concretamente del acto creador divino, que contrastan poderosamente con las denominadas filosofías del ser, representadas por el pensamiento helénico y su concepción del ser como un principio inmutable. Revisaremos los antecedentes históricos de esta doctrina, tanto fuera como dentro del marco cultural del islam, y también las razones que la justifican, como, por ejemplo, el origen, en los nombres divinos, de los cambios que se producen en el exterior y el interior del ser humano o la indigencia ontológica de todo lo creado, que obliga a que su existencia se vea renovada de continuo por medio del Aliento del Todo-Misericordioso. De esta concepción dinámica de la realidad, en la que se precisa la intervención directa de la misericordia divina para el mantenimiento del mundo, se derivan diferentes consecuencias, como la insustancialidad, la inconsistencia y el carácter imaginal de las cosas que consideramos sólidas, el movimiento incesante de todo cuanto existe y la trascendencia de nuestra concepción habitual de la ley de causa y efecto. Por otro lado, el término «creación» es sinónimo de «teofanía» o manifestación divina. A pesar de las manifestaciones teofánicas son infinitas, todas ellas son irrepetibles. Además de otros textos, Ibn ʿArabī dedica gran parte del capítulo 12 de Los engarces de las sabidurías al tema que nos ocupa, vinculando la nueva creación a las fluctuaciones experimentadas por el corazón, las manifestaciones teofánicas y la pluralidad de las creencias que, acerca de la realidad, albergamos los seres humanos. La imaginación desempeña un papel crucial en esta perspectiva vertiginosa de la existencia, en la que ninguna realidad está, por así decirlo, plenamente cerrada o constituida. La facultad de la imaginación, tan importante en la cosmovisión akbarí, también es el principal intérprete de los signos que Dios ha diseminado en el exterior y el interior del ser humano, signos que siempre remiten al divino acto creador. La función suprema de la imaginación es hacer del mundo y de nosotros mismos un lugar de revelación teofánica, es decir, llevarnos a descubrir la presencia divina en todos los seres. Para ello, el sabio debe aplicar el doble ojo que contempla, al unísono, lo absoluto y lo relativo, la luz y la oscuridad, la unidad y la multiplicidad. La doctrina de la nueva creación nos presenta, en suma, una visión abierta de la realidad que nos asegura que no estamos condenados a repetir nuestro pasado y de que siempre tenemos la posibilidad de reconocer la irrupción continua de lo «radicalmente nuevo» en nuestra historia social y personal. La nueva creación también evoca la idea de que el mundo y las vidas de los seres humanos son una obra inconclusa. Corresponde, pues, a cada uno de nosotros, y en la medida de las posibilidades de nuestra imaginación creadora, darle el desenlace final.Palabras clave: nueva creación, filosofías del acto, ser, aliento del Todo-Misericordioso, cambio, indigencia ontológica, imaginación creadora. Abstract: In Ibn ʿArabī, the doctrine known as “unity of being” has his counterpart in the dynamic view of the continuous creation or new creation, which postulates that the universe and all it contains is created and recreated constantly to each instant. It is a kaleidoscopic view of life that is part of what has been called “philosophies of the act”, and more specifically of the divine creative act, which contrast strongly with the so-called philosophies of being, represented by the Greek thought and his conception of the being as an immutable principle. We will review the historical background of this doctrine, both outside and within the cultural framework of Islam, and the underlying reasons for it, like its origin in the divine names, the changes that occur on the outside and the inside the human being or the ontological indigence of all creation, which requires that its existence needs be continuously renewed by the breath of the All-Merciful. This dynamic conception of reality, which needs the direct intervention of divine mercy for the maintenance of world, has also different consequences: insubstantiality, inconsistency and imaginal character of things we consider as solid, the movement relentless of all that exists and the transcendence of our usual conception of the law of cause and effect. The doctrine of the new creation presents us, in short, an open view of reality that assures us that we are not doomed to repeat our past, and we always have the possibility of recognizing the continuing emergence of the “radically new” in our history social and personal. The new creation also evokes the idea that the world and the lives of human beings are a work in progress. Therefore, it is up to each of us, and to the extent of our creative imagination, gives it the final outcome. Keywords: new creation, philosophies of the act, being, breath of the All-Merciful, change, ontological indigence, creative imagination. 


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Monika Szuba

The essay discusses selected poems from Thomas Hardy's vast body of poetry, focusing on representations of the self and the world. Employing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concepts such as the body-subject, wild being, flesh, and reversibility, the essay offers an analysis of Hardy's poems in the light of phenomenological philosophy. It argues that far from demonstrating ‘cosmic indifference’, Hardy's poetry offers a sympathetic vision of interrelations governing the universe. The attunement with voices of the Earth foregrounded in the poems enables the self's entanglement in the flesh of the world, a chiasmatic intertwining of beings inserted between the leaves of the world. The relation of the self with the world is established through the act of perception, mainly visual and aural, when the body becomes intertwined with the world, thus resulting in a powerful welding. Such moments of vision are brief and elusive, which enhances a sense of transitoriness, and, yet, they are also timeless as the self becomes immersed in the experience. As time is a recurrent theme in Hardy's poetry, this essay discusses it in the context of dwelling, the provisionality of which is demonstrated in the prevalent sense of temporality, marked by seasons and birdsong, which underline the rhythms of the world.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 17-30
Author(s):  
Kelly James Clark

In Branden Thornhill-Miller and Peter Millican’s challenging and provocative essay, we hear a considerably longer, more scholarly and less melodic rendition of John Lennon’s catchy tune—without religion, or at least without first-order supernaturalisms (the kinds of religion we find in the world), there’d be significantly less intra-group violence. First-order supernaturalist beliefs, as defined by Thornhill-Miller and Peter Millican (hereafter M&M), are “beliefs that claim unique authority for some particular religious tradition in preference to all others” (3). According to M&M, first-order supernaturalist beliefs are exclusivist, dogmatic, empirically unsupported, and irrational. Moreover, again according to M&M, we have perfectly natural explanations of the causes that underlie such beliefs (they seem to conceive of such natural explanations as debunking explanations). They then make a case for second-order supernaturalism, “which maintains that the universe in general, and the religious sensitivities of humanity in particular, have been formed by supernatural powers working through natural processes” (3). Second-order supernaturalism is a kind of theism, more closely akin to deism than, say, Christianity or Buddhism. It is, as such, universal (according to contemporary psychology of religion), empirically supported (according to philosophy in the form of the Fine-Tuning Argument), and beneficial (and so justified pragmatically). With respect to its pragmatic value, second-order supernaturalism, according to M&M, gets the good(s) of religion (cooperation, trust, etc) without its bad(s) (conflict and violence). Second-order supernaturalism is thus rational (and possibly true) and inconducive to violence. In this paper, I will examine just one small but important part of M&M’s argument: the claim that (first-order) religion is a primary motivator of violence and that its elimination would eliminate or curtail a great deal of violence in the world. Imagine, they say, no religion, too.Janusz Salamon offers a friendly extension or clarification of M&M’s second-order theism, one that I think, with emendations, has promise. He argues that the core of first-order religions, the belief that Ultimate Reality is the Ultimate Good (agatheism), is rational (agreeing that their particular claims are not) and, if widely conceded and endorsed by adherents of first-order religions, would reduce conflict in the world.While I favor the virtue of intellectual humility endorsed in both papers, I will argue contra M&M that (a) belief in first-order religion is not a primary motivator of conflict and violence (and so eliminating first-order religion won’t reduce violence). Second, partly contra Salamon, who I think is half right (but not half wrong), I will argue that (b) the religious resources for compassion can and should come from within both the particular (often exclusivist) and the universal (agatheistic) aspects of religious beliefs. Finally, I will argue that (c) both are guilty, as I am, of the philosopher’s obsession with belief. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 40-50
Author(s):  
Mukhammadjon Holbekov ◽  

The great Uzbek poet Alisher Navoi(1441-1501), during his lifetime, was widely known not only in his homeland, but also far beyond its borders. A contemporary and biographer of Navoi, the famous historian Hondemir, of course, not without some hyperbole, wrote: "He (Navoi -M.Kh.) in a short time took the cane of primacy from his peers; the fame of his talents spread to all ends of the world, and the stories of the firmness of his noble mind from mouth to mouth were innumerable.The pearls of his poetry adorned the leaves of the Book of Fates, the precious stones of his poetry filled the shells of the universe with pearls of beauty


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 156-160
Author(s):  
Khurshida Salimovna Safarova ◽  
Shakhnoza Islomovna Vosiyeva

Every great fiction book is a book that portrays the uniqueness of the universe and man, the difficulty of breaking that bond, or the weakening of its bond and the increase in human. The creation of such a book is beyond the reach of all creators, and not all works can illuminate the cultural, spiritual and moral status of any nation in the world by unraveling the underlying foundations of humanity. With the birth of Hoja Ahmad Yassawi's “Devoni Hikmat”, the Turkic nations were recognized as a nation with its own book of teaching, literally, the encyclopedia of enlightenment, truth and spirituality.


1993 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-177
Author(s):  
Karen Harding

Ate appearances deceiving? Do objects behave the way they do becauseGod wills it? Ate objects impetmanent and do they only exist becausethey ate continuously created by God? According to a1 Ghazlli, theanswers to all of these questions ate yes. Objects that appear to bepermanent are not. Those relationships commonly tefemed to as causalare a result of God’s habits rather than because one event inevitably leadsto another. God creates everything in the universe continuously; if Heceased to create it, it would no longer exist.These ideas seem oddly naive and unscientific to people living in thetwentieth century. They seem at odds with the common conception of thephysical world. Common sense says that the universe is made of tealobjects that persist in time. Furthermore, the behavior of these objects isreasonable, logical, and predictable. The belief that the univetse is understandablevia logic and reason harkens back to Newton’s mechanical viewof the universe and has provided one of the basic underpinnings ofscience for centuries. Although most people believe that the world is accutatelydescribed by this sort of mechanical model, the appropriatenessof such a model has been called into question by recent scientificadvances, and in particular, by quantum theory. This theory implies thatthe physical world is actually very different from what a mechanicalmodel would predit.Quantum theory seeks to explain the nature of physical entities andthe way that they interact. It atose in the early part of the twentieth centuryin response to new scientific data that could not be incorporated successfullyinto the ptevailing mechanical view of the universe. Due largely ...


Author(s):  
Simon Nicholls ◽  
Michael Pushkin ◽  
Vladimir Ashkenazy

An introduction by Boris de Schloezer gives the genesis of the final text in the section, the Preliminary Action, and explains its relation to Skryabin’s projected life-work, the Mystery. Section I: an effusion of Orthodox religious feeling from teenage years. Sections II-VII: Around 1900, an expression of rejection of God in the face of disillusion is followed by the text of the choral finale of the First Symphony, declaring faith in the power of art. An unfinished opera libretto, symbolic in narrative, expressing belief in Art’s power to seduce and persuade. Three notebooks develop a world view in which the world is the result of the self’s creative activity. The creation of art and of the universe are identical. There is a higher self, identical with divinity. Forgetfulness of individuality leads to freedom and universal consciousness. Section VIII: The literary poem written during the composition of the symphonic Poem of Ecstasy summarises the scenario developed in the notebooks. Life starts with the desire to create, delight in creative play meets opposition, the creative goal is achieved and disappointment sets in. The process is repeated until it is realized that the struggle is itself joyful and self-affirmation is achieved. Section IX: The text of the Preliminary Action is symbolic in structure. Primal Male and Female Principles emerge; the Female is identified with Death. Life arises from the union of energies. Struggle and bloodshed follow. The conclusion is an impulse towards unification, the synthesis of experience and dematerialisation. Both the complete first draft and the incomplete revision are included.


Author(s):  
Gianfranco Pacchioni

About 10,000 years ago, at the beginning of the agriculturalrevolution, on the whole earth lived between 5 and 8 million hunter-gatherers, all belonging to the Homo sapiens species. Five thousand years later, freed from the primary needs for survival, some belonging to that species enjoyed the privilege of devoting themselves to philosophical speculation and the search for transcendental truths. It was only in the past two hundred years, however, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, that reaping nature’s secrets and answering fundamental questions posed by the Universe have become for many full-time activities, on the way to becoming a real profession. Today the number of scientists across the globe has reached and exceeded 10 million, that is, more than the whole human race 10,000 years ago. If growth continues at the current rate, in 2050 we will have 35 million people committed full-time to scientific research. With what consequences, it remains to be understood. For almost forty years I myself have been concerned with science in a continuing, direct, and passionate way. Today I perceive, along with many colleagues, especially of my generation, that things are evolving and have changed deeply, in ways unimaginable until a few years ago and, in some respects, not without danger. What has happened in the world of science in recent decades is more than likely a mirror of a similar and equally radical transformation taking place in modern society, particularly with the advent ...


Among the celestial bodies the sun is certainly the first which should attract our notice. It is a fountain of light that illuminates the world! it is the cause of that heat which main­tains the productive power of nature, and makes the earth a fit habitation for man! it is the central body of the planetary system; and what renders a knowledge of its nature still more interesting to us is, that the numberless stars which compose the universe, appear, by the strictest analogy, to be similar bodies. Their innate light is so intense, that it reaches the eye of the observer from the remotest regions of space, and forcibly claims his notice. Now, if we are convinced that an inquiry into the nature and properties of the sun is highly worthy of our notice, we may also with great satisfaction reflect on the considerable progress that has already been made in our knowledge of this eminent body. It would require a long detail to enumerate all the various discoveries which have been made on this subject; I shall, therefore, content myself with giving only the most capital of them.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart M. Marshall ◽  
Cole Mathis ◽  
Emma Carrick ◽  
Graham Keenan ◽  
Geoffrey J. T. Cooper ◽  
...  

AbstractThe search for alien life is hard because we do not know what signatures are unique to life. We show why complex molecules found in high abundance are universal biosignatures and demonstrate the first intrinsic experimentally tractable measure of molecular complexity, called the molecular assembly index (MA). To do this we calculate the complexity of several million molecules and validate that their complexity can be experimentally determined by mass spectrometry. This approach allows us to identify molecular biosignatures from a set of diverse samples from around the world, outer space, and the laboratory, demonstrating it is possible to build a life detection experiment based on MA that could be deployed to extraterrestrial locations, and used as a complexity scale to quantify constraints needed to direct prebiotically plausible processes in the laboratory. Such an approach is vital for finding life elsewhere in the universe or creating de-novo life in the lab.


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