DE Weekly: Time, Eternalism, & Illusion
Over two millennia ago, the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle concocted a paradox called the “Paradox of Time,” found today in his Physics. In this paradox, we are asked to consider how time can really and truly exist.
Aristotle’s time paradox says that time is composed of non-existent states, the past and the future. These non-existent states are separated by a vanishing present; as soon as each moment of the present passes, it is gone to the past.
DE Weekly: Husserl, Aristotle, & Pyrrhonism
Would you believe me if I told you the ideas that led to the development of Existentialism appeared as early as the fourth century BC? The ideas I mean are those of suspension of judgment toward what we perceive, skepticism about the order of things, and the desire to adopt a tranquil disposition in relation to the world and the human condition.
Traditionally, philosophical ideas that we would call “existential” in nature are traced back to Søren Kierkegaard, the eighteenth-century Danish philosopher and theologian who approached the ideas through a Christian lens.
DE Weekly: Identity, Plutarch, & the Ship of Theseus
Last week, I wrote about how certain stories and writings permeate the boundaries of their genres and allow us to apply an existentialist critique of them. Another such story we’ll discuss today is the “Ship of Theseus”.
Like the Allegory of the Cave from last week, you might have heard of this popular thought experiment before. Often viewed as a paradox, this story was popularized by Plutarch, a Greek philosopher in the Roman Empire who is most famous for his biographies.
DE Weekly: Aristotle, Existence, & Essence
I’ve written in the past how existentialism is an all-encompassing philosophy–even though it was born of twentieth century thinking, its ideas are timeless ones.
What I haven’t written much about before is why existentialism is so unique, and such a novel view of things…