Milton’s Sword of the Angel and the 1664 Comet

As it relates to Spinoza and the Caliban Question below, there is an illumination of the special place the comet of the winter of 1664 played in the political, philosophical and poetic minds of that time. It is thought that Milton had this harbinger light in mind when he wrote of the sword of the “hastning Angel” who ushered out Eve [...]

HAL 9000

The Intelligence of Innocence and What Makes Things Real The “Open the pod bay doors please HAL” sequence I watched 2001: A Space Odysseyfor the first time in sometime the other night. And a few thoughts rose to mind. There is of course the incredible personality dominance of HAL in the film, the unforgettable synthetic intelligence, and his schizophrenic lapse [...]

The Condensation of Specificity: Paul’s Use of “stoicheia”

Paul’s Rhetorical Use of “stoicheia” in Galatians 4:3,9   When contemplating the rapid spread of Christianity, thought often turns to the brilliance of Paul. How else can one account for the meteoric rise of what was initial a local Jewish cult, to the level of a pan-Hellenic spiritual force, if not for that particular conceptual [...]

John Donne’s Material Monism of Love, and Spinoza’s Eternity of the Mind

John Donne’s “Valediction Forbidding Mourning” articulates a metaphysics which makes of a death an anchor point, upon which a living being can compass itself, creating a death-defying eternity of affection. He speaks in seemingly dualist terms of a sublunary love “whose soul is sense” contrasted with a love “inter-assurèd of the mind”. In this he [...]

Towers and Bridges, From Ada to Tolkien

  Nabokov’s Ada Children of her type conceive of the purest philosophies. Ada had worked out her own little system. Hardly a week had elapsed since Van’s arrival when he was found worthy of being initiated in her web of wisdom. And individual’s life consisted of certain classified things: “real things” which were unfrequent and [...]

Lindisfarne: The Rise of Illuminative Script

põs anaginóskeis;: How Do you Read? Incarnation and Genealogy in the Linsdisfarne Gospels’ Matthew Incipit Page The direction that this analysis takes is towards the Lindisfarne Gospels, and towards ultimate question of their mystery. I will leave aside the direct question as to the reasons why, after centuries of non-aestheticized sacred texts, here, in the hollows [...]