Category: One and Many
We’re excited that you’ve joined the conversation! At HMU, we want to continue the great authors’ conversations in a contemporary context, and this blog will help us do that. We look back to Aristotle and the early philosophers who used reason and discourse to gain wisdom and now we endeavor to do the same every day.
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July 2, 2021
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
“thing within thing up to the very pinnacle of source” – Plotinus
When two mirrors face each other, whatever appears in the mirror seems to endlessly repeat. Actually, light bounces off the surface duplicating the image each time. The endless reflections are all contained within the mirror, which is the main container.
This image helps me to unpack Plotinus’s idea of the way that humans interact with the Intellectual-Principle.
October 13, 2017
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
“The vastness of heavens stretches my imagination… Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?” – Richard Feynman
In 1609, Johannes Kepler published a few surprising details.
February 17, 2017
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
In “Philebus”, Socrates and Protarchus attempt to understand unity. Socrates states, “The one and many become identified by thought…They run about together, in and out of every word which is uttered…This union of them will never cease, and is not now beginning, but is an…everlasting quality of thought itself, which never grows old.” In other words, the idea of unity is an ancient one – older even than Plato’s writings and Socrates himself.
August 26, 2016
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s blog.
For the past few weeks, I have been reading presidential speeches. If you want inspiration at a time when – as many claim – spirit regarding politics is at a low point, I encourage you to read presidential speeches. Many of these addresses were given in times of great need, heartache, danger or fear. The leader’s voice comes through in these speeches as a leader of the many.
July 22, 2016
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
In “Meno”, Socrates and Meno attempt to define virtue. Here is Meno’s first attempt: “Let us take the first virtue of a man – he should know how to administer the state, and in the administration of it to benefit his friends and harm his enemies and he must also be careful not to suffer harm himself. A woman’s virtue,
June 24, 2016
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Adding to the discussion from the past couple of weeks (from a present moment , to a presence created by the mind), today we move to the variety of images created by the mind. Lucretius offers a wonderful account of the purpose and manners of images in Book IV of The Way Things Are.
June 17, 2016
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
“To be, or not to be: that is the question.” – Shakespeare, Hamlet
Last week, we discussed the practice of being fully present within an actual moment, whereas today we will discover what a number of authors say about the mind’s ability to conjure presences, to bring memories into a present moment.
November 20, 2016
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for the following book review. This was first published in the HMU fall newsletter.
Alquist, Denise, et al., eds. Imperfect Ideal: Utopian and Dystopian Visions. Chicago: Great Books Foundation, 2015. Print.
In his essay, “The Soul of Man Under Socialism”, Oscar Wilde says, “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at,