Be patient in misfortune, my soul, for all thou art suffering the intolerable; 'tis sure the heart of the baser sort is quicker to wrath. Be not heavy, thou, with pain and anger over deeds which cannot be done, nor be thou vexed thereat, nor grieve thy friends nor glad thy foes. Not easily shall mortal man escape the destined gifts of the Gods, neither if he sink to the bottom of the purple sea, nor when he be held in murky Tartarus.- Theognis of Megara (1029-1036)
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Furious Activity
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Monday, December 19, 2011
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Lessons for Posterity
Share not thy device wholly with all thy friends; few among many, for sure, have a mind that may be trusted.- Theognis of Megara (73-74)
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Monday, December 12, 2011
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Saturday, December 3, 2011
A Secular Search for Meaning in the Heart of Universal Humanism
Exhortations to virtue?... or mischief?
Equality of access bypassing/ trumping social orders of "rank" and thereby undermining all notions of 'authority', be they by nature derived from education, experience or birth.
Those interpreters who see Antigone as the proto-Christian figure are right: in her unconditional commitment she follows a different ethics that points towards Christianity (...)- why? Christianity introduces into the global balanced order of eunomia a principle totally foreign to it, a principle that measured by the standards of the pagan cosmology, cannot but appear as a monstrous distortion: the principle according to which each individual has an immediate access to universality (of the Holy Spirit, or today, of human rights and freedom) - I can participate in this universal dimension directly, irrespective of my special place within the global social order.- Slavoj Zizek, "Living in the End Times"
Equality of access bypassing/ trumping social orders of "rank" and thereby undermining all notions of 'authority', be they by nature derived from education, experience or birth.