Plato

Plato's philosophical "system" reconstructed from his major dialogues - The essay demonstrates that many different aspects of Plato's philosophy fit together in a coherent system.

Shakespeare

Shakspeare's Hamlet cited, with Kyd's A Spanish Tragedy, as leading towards Descartes' "theater of the mind" thorugh a "parallel reflexive technique" where the audience shares the players' roles as observers in the plays.

Kant

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason analytic outlined, with special focus on the faculties of "Imagination" and "Apperception." The essay argues that Kant believed knowledge transfers from implicit "unconscious understanding" to the conscious faculty of explicit "Understanding," reminiscent of Plato's theory of "recollection," and Chomsky's innateness.

 

Hegel's views on personal consciousness in The Phenomenology of Mind examined, focusing on the being of ego, an encounter with objects, and the (self) understanding. There follows a discussion of the Zodiac, and its relation to the circular, cyclical stage nature of Hegel's system.

Nietzsche

Nietzsche's general strategies and major concepts discussed, including his opposition of the Apollonian to the Dionysian, questioning the notion of Truth, and creating organizing concepts of "the over-man," "will to power," and "eternal recurrence." His honest dishonesty assessed, and his preference of the will to power focused only on individuals questioned.

Heidegger's concept of "Dasein" as used in Being and Time clarified, and discussed in relation to his later concepts of "Poetry" and "Technology," which form a fundamental opposition in his thinking and the different forms of revelation/unconcealment (all being relevant to cybernetics and poets such as Holderlin and Rilke).

Wittgenstein's early philosophy in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus outlined. Particular attention is paid to the questionable connection of pictorial form to logical form, and the dubious construction of logical operators based on binary combinatory possibilities of truth values.

Adorno & Benjamin

Adorno and Benjamin of The Frankfurt School explicated with reference to their dialectical rejection of the status-quo, which value is questioned by analogy with the "success" rate of divergent DNA. Special attention is paid to Adorno's immanent criticism of the contemporary, and Benjamin's preference for the spatially and temporally present "now."

 

Topical Essays:

Aesthetics and Cognitive Science essay discussing "style" as automatic habitual action that may be interrupted with conscious moments of choice with "taste." Such is related to neural networks and the concept of "spreading activation."

Political "metaphysics" discussed, drawing out some implications and clarifications if one accepts a dialect of the many and the one, or of divisions and connections, as important to political structures.