Thankyou kindly, also would you have any dates in mind for part two of the reading list? (Sorry to hassle) ‘Freemasonry, Illuminism, Philosophy and the Occult, the English Occult Revival, the French Occult Revival, and, perhaps, Traditionalism, Mesmerism, Spiritualism, among other contemporary topics.’
I'm a philosophy professor and just this last semester I offered at my university a travel-study course called, "Esoteric Amsterdam," where, along with traveling to the Biblioteca Hermetica Philosophica in Amsterdam, I had my students read alchemical and mystical texts by authors such as Paracelsus and Boehme and then looked at the reverberations of this tradition in modern thought on, reading texts from Swedenborg, Schelling, and Steiner. The students loved it, I had a blast, and I hope to offer the course again. So this is one philosopher who does not ignore this tradition!
Thank You for introducing the vocabulary of Renaissance Realism and Scholastic Nominalism as the historical evolution from Platonism and Aristotle. Also the rehabilitation of language with Magic and Kabbala which fits in with my respect for epistemology, second only to metaphysics in the soulless academic world controlled by the “satanic Central European Central Bankers.
@@revennui Not at all: I start with Antoine Favre's book, "Western Esotericism"; I then assign readings from "The Alchemy Reader" (the "Emerald Tablet," Plato, Aristotle, Geber, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Nicholas Flamel, Paracelsus, Robert Fludd, Elias Ashmole, et al. and the entire "Clavis" of Jakob Boehme; we then travel to the BPH in Amsterdam; after our return: selections from Swedenborg's writings, Schelling's "Philosophical Inquiry into the Essence of Human Freedom," then selections from Jung's writings on alchemy and psychology (though my assignments of more contemporary esoterica is always very much in flux). Hope that helps!
Philosophy major here. No Medieval philosophy courses were offered in your philosophy department?! You should have come to the University of Alberta. I took an early Medieval philosophy course there and not only did we talk about Medieval notions of mysticism we actually had a guest speaker who claimed to have had mystical experiences.
But I guess it's merely for entertainment purposes. Most scholars don't think its was a temple business anymore ... unless it was with the king once a year or something.
after growing up religious, renouncing religion, and being athiest for a while, i have recently began studying the occult and utilizing metaphysical concepts to find a 'spiritual' balance in my life and it has completely changed my perception of everything. love this channel and this video is illuminating and affirming!
I always experience a wry chuckle when I hear the world "enlightenment" to describe what, in the west, is basically materialism, whilst in the east, the term refers to the transcendent state that a human may reach at which point he/she discovers that the world, universe, reality itself, is actually nothing more than consciousness. In the opinion of this occult autodidact, it's the people of the east who got it right. Speaking from experience, I can say that magic absolutely works, (my favorite occult quote of all time: "Magic always works. If what you're doing doesn't work, then it isn't magic.) and somehow I doubt that reality would be so easily bent to the human will if it had an independent material reality. What else could it be than consciousness. For my money, philosophical theories are a fine way to pass the time while drinking a pint with friends, but all the clever jargon in the world won't help you cure an "incurable" disease, or deflect bullets with your will. For that you need magic. You were absolutely right (you usually are,) when you said that the bulk of people studying the occult have never given a damn about what the academics think of their great luminaries. We haven't, don't, and probably never will. Still, it gives me a lovely heartwarming feeling to hear somebody with your caliber of scholarship actually say what a shame it is that the occult philosophers are ignored by academia. It is a shame, but then, do we really want professors and their ilk learning how to cast spells, read minds, fly, etc.?? All the best, N.
@@Red_Comet_Char_Aznable It literally took until the materialist writings were rediscovered after thousands of years before human progress in Europe was made. It is so insane how many people still push idealist philosophies. Europe has still not recovered from Plato's damage.
How can you be so sure of people doing all those things that bend so intensely the habits of the universe? Maybe it was, is and/or will be a possibility, but how do you have certainty that that is consistently done by some people especially nowadays?
Hi, Dr. Sledge. I am one of your 'philosophy people.' I just wanted to compliment you on (and thank you for) a concise summary of ancient philosophy that doesn't suck. It was highly informative without rambling, and you didn't talk just to hear yourself. The role played by occultism in the resurgence of realism was something quite new to me. My education is admittedly sparse in that area. I know more than many of my peers, but I would sit like a kid with my chin in my hands, just listening, around you and @ModernHermeticist. In my experience, if you get any history of philosophy in the medieval period in departments in (most of) the anglophone world, you pretty much jump from Aquinas to Descartes; from there, medieval metaphysics is mostly abandoned, and the de facto 'beginning of western philosophy' shifts to the debates between empiricism and rationalism. Forget the Renaissance! Renaissance who?
lol, I run into this issue so much. I got into the occult as an academic through the avid long term study of folklore. I got into it through the single simple question of "Why do retellings or modern fairy tales feel different to their older cousins from generations past?" And had to face the question of "How do beliefs and religion influence the story?" Which led to "What are the beliefs from the time when these stories were written down?" So I'm here......... And on this journey I have been thoroughly disowned by my grandmother for my "belief" and "worship" of demons and witchcraft and even made my rather encouraging mom to have to sit back and question my sanity for delving into it too deeply. I'm an agnostic, bordering on atheist, armchair academic. And I have thoroughly found that the philosophies of the time and place very much dictate perceptions on things and thus how stories are told. My favorite easy example is the horror of the vampire. When "Dracula" was first written, the unholy was the scariest thing about Dracula himself, the fact that something cursed by god could still exist was terrifying. The hope in the book of crosses and holy symbology rejecting the cursed monster was the solution and relief to the reader. Fast forward to today, and the last major popular bout of vampires that were actually of a horror bent were scary *not* because of their unholiness, but of their shocking brutality and lecherous natures under demure facades and false faces. Where knowledge of their whiles or having one on our side is ultimately the consolation to the reader. That's one hell of a shift. Rambling aside... I enjoy reading stories codified during the Medieval period. The nominalism does show through in things like fairy tales and written stories. It's subtle, hard to pinpoint unfortunately. But it is very much present in things like Spencer's Faerie Queene or the Canterbury Tales, or even the great Romances from the timeframe.
That's actually really cool because I have often found myself pondering that question when thinking about how people adapt old fairy tales, myths, and legends to our era and how the weirdness of the source material doesn't travel with it.
Do you have an idea as to why that shift occured? I assume it's partly due to a disconnect from divine and holy/unholy beliefs, but it feels like there's more to it than that
@@JacobGrimi know youre not actually Jacob Grimm (for one, your last name only has one m and grim might not even be your surname) I guess I was just tickled that your name is so close to one of the guys who compiled folk lore 😅
It's sad because the majority of believers don't actually want to learn the academic side of the occult and most of the non-believers don't even take the subject seriously because they [wrongly] mistake Academic Occult Studies for supernatural religious beliefs. EDIT: I thought it was obvious this was about the mass majority of both groups, so I wasn't cautious about my wording. I edited to make it clearer.
That can be difficult. Modern laymen and popular figures of science do it a discredit by way of assuming it’s the ultimate way to view all things that happen in the world and cosmos at large; the most human. It stared into voids its technology wasn’t ready for, and in doing so became the dogmatic beast that it itself sought to free modern man from the shackles of monotheism. Furthermore, if we could put say- Sandalphon, in lab settings and verify their existence, we’ve reached a stark and cold day for humanity. We’ll have abandoned the child inside instead of walking hand in hand with them. In the words of the late Terry Pratchett, “Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the fallen angel meets the rising ape.” Fantasy isn’t just dalliance, it’s the freeing play of eternity, the coming back to ourselves.
This also centralizes 'belief' as the primary axis of difference between practitioners and non-practitioners, which isn't so accurate. At the same time I do agree with the vibe of your post in a fuzzy way
I'm an atheist and yet I think the subject is fascinating just from a philosophical perspective. You'll be surprised by how many atheists are actually interested in this.
The occult is kind of an odd mix of psychology, philosophy, and mythology. Now we have things organized into separate disciplines for the sake of focus and occult thinking is easily dismissed as faith based superstition, but there are still insights and merits. It definitely helps if you’re creatively inclined.
Superstition boils down to a slur. Magical and magic-adjacent practices logically follow from certain metaphysical axioms, some of which are non-falsifiable. "Superstition" is but a pejorative used to casually and reductively dismiss the practical conclusions of alternative metaphysical premises than the speaker adopts without actually critically analyzing them. From an absolute empirical baseline, where naught non-falsifiable is assumed, we are uncertain if ourselves and the world we perceive actually exist to begin with.
Both of these comments are really excellent wordings of some of my thoughts on this. I just mentioned something similar in my own comment to the idea of superstition being non-falsifiable but you gave a better reasoning of WHY it's non-falsifiable from a meta-physics standpoint. I low-key forgot about the concept of meta-physics since I took a philosophy intro like 6 years ago or maybe longer. But that's a good term I was missing to explain the fact that we don't know a lot of things outside the scope of how we define "knowing" under the assumption that the world exists and is all that we think it is and nothing more.
@@concerninghobbits5536 You probably want to add epistemology to your lexicon as well, then (assuming it was not already in there). To put it in terms Sledge has so wonderfully-put before, superstition belies epistemological hubris. A magical operation predicated on premises later falsified does not necessarily mean the people were stupid, irrational, shallow in their thinking, willfully blind, or otherwise deserving of contempt or derision. We know for a fact that our understanding of material science is categorically not exactly correct and not comprehensive and some of our surrounding beliefs and behaviors based on the current limits of our understanding will inevitably prove misguided in hindsight. Where it concerns traditional magic, while some of the underlying premises we now know to be empirically invalid, the jury is still out for plenty others in which a form of what we might call magic could hypothetically be possible.
@@NevisYsbryd had to refresh myself, metaphysics I remembered but haven't been using but epistemology I had actually forgotten, we did talk about it in my one class but I guess people say metaphysical a lot more in day to day life. There are definitely a lot of possibilities for things we don't know/things we don't know that we don't know, which could absolutely change a lot. I wonder if that transition would be slower now as we get more advanced since it becomes harder to find anything new until a groundbreaking discovery is made? But yeah I suppose epistemology is maybe more important or relevant to nominalism while metaphysics are more in line with realism. Nominalism not really having any defined metaphysical "real" things outside of just whatever the human experience is, and realism being dependent on existing and real concepts (created by god or something similar?).
@@concerninghobbits5536 Nominalism and realism are different metaphysical positions rather than one opposing metaphysics. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of reality at the conceptual level. Eg, Physicalism is a specific metaphysical claim (that valid metaphysics are exclusively physical) as much as Plato's Theory of Forms and Emanation Theory. Language created by the divine is one option, though rarely what those theories our forward. Realist schools of thought are usually predicated on an assumption that the symbol used for language itself either animate, an emanation of or able sympathetic to and thus able to invoke a transcendent quintessence or entity, or otherwise somehow a tangible expression of or interface to some transcendent phenomenon or essence. They usually assume that the specifics of the symbol are not arbitrary but somehow encoded into or at least interfaced with an objective layer of reality itself rather than an artificial construct, even by divine proverbial hands.
It's very refreshing to see this kind of content, on UA-cam or anywhere in general! To the point of examining occult philosophies within their historical context: I've had a few heated arguments with Thelemites after saying that Aleister Crowley was an orientalist (and a very typical one at that) riding the very tail end of the British Empire and egyptomania, and that that's undoubtedly influenced Thelema. I had a similar problem trying to explain who Aleister Crowley was and why he might be relevant to the discussion to my philosophy/cultural studies professor.
Another amazing video, you and all of your colleagues have forever changed how i think about all these subjects, ive learned that theres always more than meets the eye to our understanding of history and that things where way more complicated and strange than we can ever suppose from our deep ignorance. Thank you so much..
Sorry to hear about your training! After listening to your intro, I felt very lucky for the philosophy seminars I had. Medieval and religious philosophy courses at my undergrad and courses on mysticism and a variety of courses like that in grad school. As a professor now, I make sure to include these topics and influences as much as I can. Thank you for always giving me more wisdom to share
Of all your videos I have seen, this was my favorite. As soon as it was over, I watched it again. Something about these ideas hit me as massively profound in a way I cannot explain. No one has ever been able to sum up the idea of magical philosophy in the High Middle Ages like this for me. I think my path is altered as a result of watching it. Thank you for your work.
I actually did learn a fair bit about medieval Scholasticism and neo-Platonism in a religious studies class, and the professor who taught it was the best. I need to get back in touch with him...
Just wanted to say, I don't have a spiritual bone in my body, but keep reading books that draw heavily on mystic themes. I've often tried to read about things like tarot and alchemy, but struggled to stay interested or remember what I'd read. However, been watching your videos for the past couple months, and you manage to keep me engaged and entertained in a topic I normally struggle with. Thank you very much for doing these videos for us!
That’s what I love about his videos. There will be a few gems that make you want to look into another subject. I research a few and forget a few and on second listening it hits you like “oh that’s what I forgot to look into!” I just really appreciate the in depth analysis.
surprised to hear this. Aggripa and Mirandola, just the first two you mentioned, not to mention the entire Medieval canon: had classes on all of it here in Brazil during my phil phd. Aggripa is often mentioned in epistemology classes, even have a good friend who wrote a diss on him.
Very glad to hear names like Ficino and della Mirandola again! Several grad-level experimental courses with Neo-Platonic themes in both philosophy and history were offered in the mid-late ‘70s at PSU
This was a thoroughly enjoyable episode, thank you! I approach these from a somewhat less philosophy-filled background, so I wasn't fully aware of the deficit in typical studies until I found this channel.
This is such a great video! It put so much together for me. I can’t believe I never made the connection between renaissance spirituality/humanism and platonism. Amazing stuff.
Fascinating, thank you! As a philosophical dilettante whose interests have leaned toward the mind-body problem, I have to redefine “realist” for this discussion. That is, you’re talking about realists regarding “universals” as opposed to metaphysical realism about the physical world and idealism and panpsychism about consciousness or mind…
Fascinating video! I'm not very familiar with the thinkers you talk about beyond your videos and some other brief "secondary sources" of people mentioning them, so I'm sorry if my questions are misguided, but did the philosophers in this "Realist revival" that came with the Renaissance present arguments for Realism or was it a more descriptive endeavor of showing what are the linguistic universals that shape reality and how they do so? Did they mostly rely on Plato's (and neoplatonic) arguments and ran with it or did they provide new arguments for Realism and rebuttals for Nominalism? Were these rebuttals more experimental, by showing their mystical experiences and magical experiments that would confirm that a Sacred Language does indeed govern the world?
Another amazing video! Thank you Justin for your tireless work to uncover the lost philosophy of the past. This video really helped me contextualize the role of occult in influencing mainstream philosophy.
Now I'm astonished. And envious. I'm technically guilty of being a witch just for watching this video, where i live. I think that's why i cannot get enough of Dr Sledge, Foolish Fish, let's talk about religion. I've been sheltered from this HEDONISTIC knowledge my whole life... and i don't want my kids to suffer the same ignorance
That’s cool. In the USA it’s required to have no philosophy, and watch a lot of television shows and listen to lame brainwashing music growing up, and eat lots of unhealthy foods.
Yeah I was surprised to hear the intro. Here in Finland academic philosophy is very acquainted with the medieval period as well. The bachelor-level courses I took in Jyväskylä were constantly discussing scholasticism and you couldn't get through most courses without some mention of Aquinas. An introductory course to the history of philosophy spent about four or five lectures on medieval thought, where I remember we talked at length about neoplatonism specifically, for example. There is a fair amount of research in medieval philosophy also published here. I don't think I've seen a class in my uni on it, but there is some academic literature being written that deals with the occult as well. It comes mostly from history and theological departments though.
What a great summary of many historical philosophical positions and ideas that are, far too often, presented in a non-contextualized and a-historical way. Interesting that Plato's writings were not available in the 15th Century as much as I thought (assumed) they were (mainly because of Augustine's Neo-Platonist influence on Christianity). I guess that's why I watch your Channel so much, because I'm always learning something new.
How occult and magickal practice influenced the development of natural philosophy and science might also be a noteworthy topic of exploration! I did the tiniest bit of research on that for an undergraduate paper and it was a treasure trove for me. People like Isaac Newton, Jan Baptist van Helmont, and Francis Bacon are notable examples, to name a few. Might be a topic for a future video!
In my freshman year Western Civilization survey course, we had a nickel tour of this area. I remember the lecturer referring to Pico della Mirandolo as 'a teenager who wanted to be an angel'. Funny, the things that stick after all these years.
Haha, Greg Kaminsky's Celestial Intelligences was crucial for my understanding the interelationship of Kabbalah/Qabalah and that Pico was referred to as "a teenager who wanted to be an angel" would be funnier if not for the fact that so many teenagers openly prefer to embody what is traditionally seen as demonic.
Wasn't so sure I was going to care much about this episode, but once again, Dr, Justin triumphs. He's lent a width, breadth, depth and color to how these competing thought processes have influenced thinking since the Middle Ages right down to this very day.
Fantastic video! Probably my favorite one yet. Very helpful for you to trace these philosophical threads through history and provide context for the popularity of hermetic and occult philosophy in the renaissance
"The deeply philosophical position of... other". LOL A great episode, and honestly it helped me under philosophical realism better than my college courses oh so long ago. An aside: as a computer scientist (programmer, systems analyst, data scientist, etc.) I wonder if we all are pretty much secretly all philosophical realists since our abstract and synthetic languages cause physical effects. GOSUB "Part Red Sea" indeed. (yeah, it's in BASIC. For the rubes. Ya think I'd give an example in my preferred C++ and SQL?)
what i love about this channel is hearing how no matter what period of history you pick there are people who believe how they see and explain the world is absolutely true. yet we look back and think 'how could they ever believe that?". then I wonder, in the future what beliefs do we have now that will be scoffed at.
Second time through. I expect couple of times more at least. So I am able to spin into the questions that I have and come back to it. Thanks for giving that kind of a lecture.
Amazing episode, Justin! Re. the current interest in realism: Coming from an arty / weird humanities bubble, I can testify how the ‘ontological turn’ with OOO and New Materialism, the inclusion of animism from indigenous voices plus more somatic/performative readings of language in queer, affect and black studies has def threw wood on the realist pile. In what seems an almost post medieval approach, language is most often taken as organic matter that matters us and the world as a whole.
19:05 - "irrational 'Enlightenment Rationalism' infused..." 19:12 - "I'm very pro-Enlightenment!" It would rock so hard if we got a Dr. Sledge upload of just continuous ranting about how painfully the term Rationalism is misused today (maybe even touching on how many of its current invokers, like the "effective altruism" crowd, would make our guy Spinoza roll in his grave). Would rock so hard.
I liked this so much! I laughed a lot, and hopefully in the right places. I stared at it and it all became clear! Thank you Dr Sledge for your insight and knowledge. I will take my minimally necessary amount of beings and buy another t shirt
Yes, i have come to the same conclusion recently after discovering the rich traditions of the Gnostic and Hermetic traditions and other mystic ones like eastern Tantra, Sufism, Kabbalah, etc that have lots to offer the modern scholar of philosophy and occult mysteries.
This was a great video, both as a refresher as to what realism and nominalism really refer to, but also recontextualizing, in my mind, the impact of realism on the modern Western philosophical landscape. What I appreciated most was the reminder as to how realism, nominalism, and rationalism were sort of positioned relative to each other. That being said, as someone who's an extreme anti-realist, I do still think realism as influenced by Platonism and Hermeticism was an ultimately negative development for Western society because its inbuilt metaphysical hierarchy paved the way for many reactionary ideologies and movements that have killed millions. This idea of perfect forms that one can reach via practice/the word is a more often than not dangerous one when applied politically.
Can I get some citations on that? Platonism and Neoplatonism are actually very ‘chill’ (in today’s terminology). These are some of the most peaceful philosophies ever expounded. Hierarchies in platonic tradition are highly fluid for humans, and the notion of reincarnation constantly challenges any entrenched social hierarchy. All of the perfect forms are internally accessible by anyone, merely by contemplation. The forms in reality are diluted and trying to “perfect” reality to match that is unnatural even in Platonism.
@@Sanchuniathon384 The citation list is pretty long in this case. Many of the earliest proto-Fascist and fascist thinkers such as Guenon, Evola, Sebatendorf, et al. were directly inspired by Western esoteric realist traditions and espoused a worldview in which there were transcendental categories of upper and lower caste people, often along racial lines. These ideas directly inspired/influenced the fascist movements of Germany and Italy, and even outside them, this transcendental racial hierarchy was a major component of eugenicist thought.
@@MrGksarathy Yeah I don't think anyone would challenge that. Thule Society even started with breakaway Freemasons. However, nobody would morally or ethically tie that to esotericism. So why should Platonism, an even older philosophy with greater distance, have anything to do with a revivalist (esoteric) movement, that then became the theoretical seeds for totalitarian systems of the 20th century. This is more like tracking a cross-century historical game of telephone. It's a stretch at best, I'm just not convinced. Sometimes genealogy of thought is normative, sometimes it's not, and that normativity drops off very quickly as time goes on.
@@Sanchuniathon384 Obviously, you can never conclusively say these links are ontologically real, but there is a strong connection between Platonism, the Realist Revival, and the later mysticism/Spiritualism-fascism pipeline. The evidence is there to make a strong link. Besides, you contend that Platonic hierarchies are fluid with regards to humans, but the very idea that there exist unchanging forms that transcend material existence builds in a rigidity that can far more easily be employed in service of reifying a hierarchical status quo, and it has frequently been used this way. Of course metaphysics can be used by anyone to support any ideology, but I feel realism/Platonism is a much easier friend of conservatism and because the rigidity suggested by the forms/universals is far too restrictive and boring for my taste. I'd rather live in a world where everything and anything can and will constantly change with no true essence.
@@MrGksarathy I am not against status quos, it's not something in me to oppose. I think you're right about rigid hierarchies preferring worldviews that, shockingly, reflect their rigid hierarchies. As a point of clarification, I highly doubt Platonists of today would even subscribe to only unchanging forms. For example, I lean more towards Neoplatonism, and changing forms -- some forms like math don't change, there's nothing to change. But, forms that resemble something more like a strange attractor? Those certainly are changing. I don't think you'd ever find a Platonist today who would sincerely say you aren't entitled to your worldview, you can freely reside there and be happy to be left alone or to come and go as you please, much as many Platonists would prefer as well. Besides, it's Plato and Proclus and Plotinus we're talking about. Heidegger was dropped like a hot potato when his black journals came out. Plato was more along the line of "I have made a perfect republic, but where are my perfect people?" In many ways he complained that we aren't inherently able to produce a beautiful Republic. We can learn from its example as an educational tool, and that's what helped inspire things like the Declaration of The Rights of Man in France. The Republic and Laws were used as instructional texts for the Founding Fathers. There are already examples in the world where we used these materials with a critical eye, and I would dare say even successfully adapted them. Not all of them are bad, in fact many were positive contributions and helped build a healthy skepticism of political power.
interesting correlation between hermeticism and the rise of realism as represented through geometry. the current resurgence of Egyptian biogeometry, which holds that subtle vibrational energies can be harnessed, contained within shapes (eg soundwaves) that determine its function, as demonstrated in the work of Dr. Ibrahim Karim, seems to score major empirical points for the realism camp
To some extent. Sound is a physical phenomenon. How related the meaning humans associate as corresponding to a sound pattern is another matter that does not necessarily follow from sound itself having an empirically observable effect.
Beautiful and convincing demonstration of the main claim re: the importance of integrating fully into mainstream philosophical studies and without intellectual 'cleansing' the many voices that have been traditionally excluded from the canon, those treated like embarrassing aunties and uncles and ignored (as if, to continue with the metaphor, their genetic input is somehow irrelevant and expunge able.... ah, the folly).
I studied Medieval Philosophy as part of a Philosophy core sequence as part of a BA majoring in Philosophy, at the University of Tennessee in the late 1970s. I wonder if the elimination of that essential history occurred over time, or was it just your school?
Another most elegant and important discussion. Again, THANK YOU!! ( I enjoy the Chopin, end of Nocturne, that plays at the beginning and end of every video. )
I will say this because I do feel comfortable enough to say it. I have been searching for a long time on information that relates to the study of magic, history, religion, and spirituality. Your channel has never provided a video that has disappointed in this regard. The reason why I want to study this material so badly is because, for the longest time, it felt and seemed like there is a lot more to learn about spirituality than what is just in the bible. The bible is still a good book, but it most certainly is not the only book. It is also not just pure occult knowledge, which is a hodgepodge/minefield of bullshit and pseudo-knowledge. My biggest issue that the bible does not explain what a lot of the mysteries of God is, and how a lot of things work. My hunger for this knowledge throughout almost the entirety of my life has been a challenging pursuit, the biggest reason is a spiritual thirst for knowledge in asking the biggest question time and time again. "Why? and How?" Thank you Dr. Sledge, thank you for what you do! Thank you for providing free academic knowledge on this subject, recommending excellent reading material. For the first time in my life, it certainly feels like my spirituality and knowledge can both become one and I can spiritually breathe. And to think that I was seriously thinking about joining fressmasonry so that I could get knowledge in this regard, not even really knowing if most freemasons have this type of knowledge or not.
I went to grad school at a jesuit university and I am happy report that they did offer a medieval philosophy course. The topics the professor chose to cover were not my favorite, but still a win in my book!
Yeah....started out loading hay trailers in Lauderdale before the internet. Now I'm watching a Dr. from Pearl, the best I can gather who, by the way, puts out the best content on UA-cam!!!!
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Thankyou kindly, also would you have any dates in mind for part two of the reading list? (Sorry to hassle)
‘Freemasonry, Illuminism, Philosophy and the Occult, the English Occult Revival, the French Occult Revival, and, perhaps, Traditionalism, Mesmerism, Spiritualism, among other contemporary topics.’
I'm a philosophy professor and just this last semester I offered at my university a travel-study course called, "Esoteric Amsterdam," where, along with traveling to the Biblioteca Hermetica Philosophica in Amsterdam, I had my students read alchemical and mystical texts by authors such as Paracelsus and Boehme and then looked at the reverberations of this tradition in modern thought on, reading texts from Swedenborg, Schelling, and Steiner. The students loved it, I had a blast, and I hope to offer the course again.
So this is one philosopher who does not ignore this tradition!
Aw man I wanna go on that
Thank You for introducing the vocabulary of Renaissance Realism and Scholastic Nominalism as the historical evolution from Platonism and Aristotle. Also the rehabilitation of language with Magic and Kabbala which fits in with my respect for epistemology, second only to metaphysics in the soulless academic world controlled by the “satanic Central European Central Bankers.
Do you mind sharing your reading list?
Swedenborg ❤❤❤ I wonder if there is a lineage from ascent mysticism up to him, quite the esoteric explorer.
@@revennui Not at all: I start with Antoine Favre's book, "Western Esotericism"; I then assign readings from "The Alchemy Reader" (the "Emerald Tablet," Plato, Aristotle, Geber, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Nicholas Flamel, Paracelsus, Robert Fludd, Elias Ashmole, et al. and the entire "Clavis" of Jakob Boehme; we then travel to the BPH in Amsterdam; after our return: selections from Swedenborg's writings, Schelling's "Philosophical Inquiry into the Essence of Human Freedom," then selections from Jung's writings on alchemy and psychology (though my assignments of more contemporary esoterica is always very much in flux). Hope that helps!
Philosophy major here. No Medieval philosophy courses were offered in your philosophy department?! You should have come to the University of Alberta. I took an early Medieval philosophy course there and not only did we talk about Medieval notions of mysticism we actually had a guest speaker who claimed to have had mystical experiences.
UofA has Medieval Philosophy?!? I'm only a province away 😊
@@ethanmctavish9551 They did in the 90s, when I was going there. I'm not sure about today, but probably.
Superrational Prophetic Intercourse would make a decent band name
Sounds more like an album title to me but I hear ya.
Or a strain of weed...
A Bill Laswell album. @@alwilliams5177
But I guess it's merely for entertainment purposes. Most scholars don't think its was a temple business anymore ... unless it was with the king once a year or something.
@@alwilliams5177 yes, a bill laswell album
after growing up religious, renouncing religion, and being athiest for a while, i have recently began studying the occult and utilizing metaphysical concepts to find a 'spiritual' balance in my life and it has completely changed my perception of everything. love this channel and this video is illuminating and affirming!
Have you heard of stoicism?
@@BlackJesus8463
ive stumbled upon the phrase but don't know much about it just yet. i'm in my learning era, i'll look into it
@@BlackJesus8463did ole boi opium Aurelius inspire ya
Ex-philosophy major here, I am
absolutely here for the academic philosophy slander.
slander implies what I'm saying is false :)
@@TheEsotericaChannel FAIR, my first language is French, sorry But, I do agree with every criticism you gave to academic philosophy.
@@skelly0000 🤣
@@TheEsotericaChannel how about Trash-talk?
Or how about long overdue, much deserved criticism?
@@gawagaicastigate, denounce, lambaste?
I always experience a wry chuckle when I hear the world "enlightenment" to describe what, in the west, is basically materialism, whilst in the east, the term refers to the transcendent state that a human may reach at which point he/she discovers that the world, universe, reality itself, is actually nothing more than consciousness.
In the opinion of this occult autodidact, it's the people of the east who got it right. Speaking from experience, I can say that magic absolutely works, (my favorite occult quote of all time: "Magic always works. If what you're doing doesn't work, then it isn't magic.) and somehow I doubt that reality would be so easily bent to the human will if it had an independent material reality. What else could it be than consciousness.
For my money, philosophical theories are a fine way to pass the time while drinking a pint with friends, but all the clever jargon in the world won't help you cure an "incurable" disease, or deflect bullets with your will. For that you need magic.
You were absolutely right (you usually are,) when you said that the bulk of people studying the occult have never given a damn about what the academics think of their great luminaries. We haven't, don't, and probably never will. Still, it gives me a lovely heartwarming feeling to hear somebody with your caliber of scholarship actually say what a shame it is that the occult philosophers are ignored by academia.
It is a shame, but then, do we really want professors and their ilk learning how to cast spells, read minds, fly, etc.??
All the best, N.
@@Red_Comet_Char_Aznable It literally took until the materialist writings were rediscovered after thousands of years before human progress in Europe was made. It is so insane how many people still push idealist philosophies. Europe has still not recovered from Plato's damage.
How can you be so sure of people doing all those things that bend so intensely the habits of the universe? Maybe it was, is and/or will be a possibility, but how do you have certainty that that is consistently done by some people especially nowadays?
Hi, Dr. Sledge. I am one of your 'philosophy people.' I just wanted to compliment you on (and thank you for) a concise summary of ancient philosophy that doesn't suck. It was highly informative without rambling, and you didn't talk just to hear yourself. The role played by occultism in the resurgence of realism was something quite new to me. My education is admittedly sparse in that area. I know more than many of my peers, but I would sit like a kid with my chin in my hands, just listening, around you and @ModernHermeticist. In my experience, if you get any history of philosophy in the medieval period in departments in (most of) the anglophone world, you pretty much jump from Aquinas to Descartes; from there, medieval metaphysics is mostly abandoned, and the de facto 'beginning of western philosophy' shifts to the debates between empiricism and rationalism. Forget the Renaissance! Renaissance who?
lol, I run into this issue so much. I got into the occult as an academic through the avid long term study of folklore. I got into it through the single simple question of "Why do retellings or modern fairy tales feel different to their older cousins from generations past?" And had to face the question of "How do beliefs and religion influence the story?" Which led to "What are the beliefs from the time when these stories were written down?"
So I'm here......... And on this journey I have been thoroughly disowned by my grandmother for my "belief" and "worship" of demons and witchcraft and even made my rather encouraging mom to have to sit back and question my sanity for delving into it too deeply.
I'm an agnostic, bordering on atheist, armchair academic. And I have thoroughly found that the philosophies of the time and place very much dictate perceptions on things and thus how stories are told.
My favorite easy example is the horror of the vampire. When "Dracula" was first written, the unholy was the scariest thing about Dracula himself, the fact that something cursed by god could still exist was terrifying. The hope in the book of crosses and holy symbology rejecting the cursed monster was the solution and relief to the reader.
Fast forward to today, and the last major popular bout of vampires that were actually of a horror bent were scary *not* because of their unholiness, but of their shocking brutality and lecherous natures under demure facades and false faces. Where knowledge of their whiles or having one on our side is ultimately the consolation to the reader.
That's one hell of a shift.
Rambling aside... I enjoy reading stories codified during the Medieval period. The nominalism does show through in things like fairy tales and written stories. It's subtle, hard to pinpoint unfortunately. But it is very much present in things like Spencer's Faerie Queene or the Canterbury Tales, or even the great Romances from the timeframe.
That's actually really cool because I have often found myself pondering that question when thinking about how people adapt old fairy tales, myths, and legends to our era and how the weirdness of the source material doesn't travel with it.
Do you have an idea as to why that shift occured? I assume it's partly due to a disconnect from divine and holy/unholy beliefs, but it feels like there's more to it than that
@@JacobGrim (making a joke about your username here) I mean shouldn't you, of all people, have the answers to that question?
@@JacobGrimi know youre not actually Jacob Grimm (for one, your last name only has one m and grim might not even be your surname) I guess I was just tickled that your name is so close to one of the guys who compiled folk lore 😅
Dr. Sledge: I adore your channel and you presentation style. You are a great orator, a great explainer, a great researcher, and a great guy.
Thanks for your important work.
It's sad because the majority of believers don't actually want to learn the academic side of the occult and most of the non-believers don't even take the subject seriously because they [wrongly] mistake Academic Occult Studies for supernatural religious beliefs.
EDIT: I thought it was obvious this was about the mass majority of both groups, so I wasn't cautious about my wording. I edited to make it clearer.
That can be difficult. Modern laymen and popular figures of science do it a discredit by way of assuming it’s the ultimate way to view all things that happen in the world and cosmos at large; the most human. It stared into voids its technology wasn’t ready for, and in doing so became the dogmatic beast that it itself sought to free modern man from the shackles of monotheism.
Furthermore, if we could put say- Sandalphon, in lab settings and verify their existence, we’ve reached a stark and cold day for humanity. We’ll have abandoned the child inside instead of walking hand in hand with them.
In the words of the late Terry Pratchett, “Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the fallen angel meets the rising ape.”
Fantasy isn’t just dalliance, it’s the freeing play of eternity, the coming back to ourselves.
Pretty big generalization about current practitioners there.
Add “majority of” and your statement is instantly more accurate.
This also centralizes 'belief' as the primary axis of difference between practitioners and non-practitioners, which isn't so accurate. At the same time I do agree with the vibe of your post in a fuzzy way
I'm an atheist and yet I think the subject is fascinating just from a philosophical perspective. You'll be surprised by how many atheists are actually interested in this.
Been waiting for this episode, (always) looking forward to more on occult philosophy and Dee in general. Many thanks.
The occult is kind of an odd mix of psychology, philosophy, and mythology. Now we have things organized into separate disciplines for the sake of focus and occult thinking is easily dismissed as faith based superstition, but there are still insights and merits. It definitely helps if you’re creatively inclined.
Superstition boils down to a slur. Magical and magic-adjacent practices logically follow from certain metaphysical axioms, some of which are non-falsifiable. "Superstition" is but a pejorative used to casually and reductively dismiss the practical conclusions of alternative metaphysical premises than the speaker adopts without actually critically analyzing them. From an absolute empirical baseline, where naught non-falsifiable is assumed, we are uncertain if ourselves and the world we perceive actually exist to begin with.
Both of these comments are really excellent wordings of some of my thoughts on this. I just mentioned something similar in my own comment to the idea of superstition being non-falsifiable but you gave a better reasoning of WHY it's non-falsifiable from a meta-physics standpoint. I low-key forgot about the concept of meta-physics since I took a philosophy intro like 6 years ago or maybe longer. But that's a good term I was missing to explain the fact that we don't know a lot of things outside the scope of how we define "knowing" under the assumption that the world exists and is all that we think it is and nothing more.
@@concerninghobbits5536 You probably want to add epistemology to your lexicon as well, then (assuming it was not already in there). To put it in terms Sledge has so wonderfully-put before, superstition belies epistemological hubris.
A magical operation predicated on premises later falsified does not necessarily mean the people were stupid, irrational, shallow in their thinking, willfully blind, or otherwise deserving of contempt or derision. We know for a fact that our understanding of material science is categorically not exactly correct and not comprehensive and some of our surrounding beliefs and behaviors based on the current limits of our understanding will inevitably prove misguided in hindsight. Where it concerns traditional magic, while some of the underlying premises we now know to be empirically invalid, the jury is still out for plenty others in which a form of what we might call magic could hypothetically be possible.
@@NevisYsbryd had to refresh myself, metaphysics I remembered but haven't been using but epistemology I had actually forgotten, we did talk about it in my one class but I guess people say metaphysical a lot more in day to day life.
There are definitely a lot of possibilities for things we don't know/things we don't know that we don't know, which could absolutely change a lot. I wonder if that transition would be slower now as we get more advanced since it becomes harder to find anything new until a groundbreaking discovery is made?
But yeah I suppose epistemology is maybe more important or relevant to nominalism while metaphysics are more in line with realism. Nominalism not really having any defined metaphysical "real" things outside of just whatever the human experience is, and realism being dependent on existing and real concepts (created by god or something similar?).
@@concerninghobbits5536 Nominalism and realism are different metaphysical positions rather than one opposing metaphysics. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of reality at the conceptual level. Eg, Physicalism is a specific metaphysical claim (that valid metaphysics are exclusively physical) as much as Plato's Theory of Forms and Emanation Theory.
Language created by the divine is one option, though rarely what those theories our forward. Realist schools of thought are usually predicated on an assumption that the symbol used for language itself either animate, an emanation of or able sympathetic to and thus able to invoke a transcendent quintessence or entity, or otherwise somehow a tangible expression of or interface to some transcendent phenomenon or essence. They usually assume that the specifics of the symbol are not arbitrary but somehow encoded into or at least interfaced with an objective layer of reality itself rather than an artificial construct, even by divine proverbial hands.
It's very refreshing to see this kind of content, on UA-cam or anywhere in general!
To the point of examining occult philosophies within their historical context: I've had a few heated arguments with Thelemites after saying that Aleister Crowley was an orientalist (and a very typical one at that) riding the very tail end of the British Empire and egyptomania, and that that's undoubtedly influenced Thelema. I had a similar problem trying to explain who Aleister Crowley was and why he might be relevant to the discussion to my philosophy/cultural studies professor.
As a Thelemite this made me smile a lot. It is indeed a child of its time.
This video is not only a great introduction to the history of the ocult but a great lesson on the history of philosophy
I keep coming back to this channel for the depth and style of delivery, so eloquent so well thought out and delivered with a brilliant sense of style
your script writing is fire, thank you
Another amazing video, you and all of your colleagues have forever changed how i think about all these subjects, ive learned that theres always more than meets the eye to our understanding of history and that things where way more complicated and strange than we can ever suppose from our deep ignorance. Thank you so much..
Filling that hole in academia you point out is the whole point of this channel. Keep up the good work!
Sorry to hear about your training! After listening to your intro, I felt very lucky for the philosophy seminars I had. Medieval and religious philosophy courses at my undergrad and courses on mysticism and a variety of courses like that in grad school. As a professor now, I make sure to include these topics and influences as much as I can. Thank you for always giving me more wisdom to share
I'm enjoying my time at the Sledge Graduate School of Philosophical Studies.
Thanks!
Of all your videos I have seen, this was my favorite. As soon as it was over, I watched it again. Something about these ideas hit me as massively profound in a way I cannot explain. No one has ever been able to sum up the idea of magical philosophy in the High Middle Ages like this for me. I think my path is altered as a result of watching it. Thank you for your work.
Brilliant, Justin. And long overdue. Thank you for your ongoing efforts. Very much appreciated. Cheers from Toronto.
I actually did learn a fair bit about medieval Scholasticism and neo-Platonism in a religious studies class, and the professor who taught it was the best. I need to get back in touch with him...
What was the Professors name?
@@kimsastro-healing108 Dr. Jason Roberts at UT Austin
@@kimsastro-healing108 Dr. Jason Roberts at UT Austin's Religious Studies Department.
Just wanted to say, I don't have a spiritual bone in my body, but keep reading books that draw heavily on mystic themes. I've often tried to read about things like tarot and alchemy, but struggled to stay interested or remember what I'd read. However, been watching your videos for the past couple months, and you manage to keep me engaged and entertained in a topic I normally struggle with. Thank you very much for doing these videos for us!
I need to watch this again when I'm not busy. You touched on a few subjects like Semiotics that have always fascinated me.
That’s what I love about his videos. There will be a few gems that make you want to look into another subject. I research a few and forget a few and on second listening it hits you like “oh that’s what I forgot to look into!” I just really appreciate the in depth analysis.
Excited to be waking up to another great video about a topic that I didn’t know I wanted to learn about!
surprised to hear this. Aggripa and Mirandola, just the first two you mentioned, not to mention the entire Medieval canon: had classes on all of it here in Brazil during my phil phd. Aggripa is often mentioned in epistemology classes, even have a good friend who wrote a diss on him.
It would be interesting to see if it's a European/American thing. Perhaps culture effects areas of study more than we realize?
such a fan of every presentation from Dr Justin Sledge and props to him on the inclusion of esoteric thought and philosophy!
Very glad to hear names like Ficino and della Mirandola again! Several grad-level experimental courses with Neo-Platonic themes in both philosophy and history were offered in the mid-late ‘70s at PSU
This was a thoroughly enjoyable episode, thank you! I approach these from a somewhat less philosophy-filled background, so I wasn't fully aware of the deficit in typical studies until I found this channel.
Nothing better than to ponder the rational and philosophical on a Friday night with a new video from esoterica. Thank you Professor!
Your work is phenomenal. I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating that I appreciate all that you put out for the world on these topics!
Thank you for the quick comparison between various philosophy and the open mind!
I tried to like this video at three separate points in the video. Thank you again.
Same here, haha.
This is such a great video! It put so much together for me. I can’t believe I never made the connection between renaissance spirituality/humanism and platonism. Amazing stuff.
Fascinating, thank you! As a philosophical dilettante whose interests have leaned toward the mind-body problem, I have to redefine “realist” for this discussion. That is, you’re talking about realists regarding “universals” as opposed to metaphysical realism about the physical world and idealism and panpsychism about consciousness or mind…
Fascinating video! I'm not very familiar with the thinkers you talk about beyond your videos and some other brief "secondary sources" of people mentioning them, so I'm sorry if my questions are misguided, but did the philosophers in this "Realist revival" that came with the Renaissance present arguments for Realism or was it a more descriptive endeavor of showing what are the linguistic universals that shape reality and how they do so? Did they mostly rely on Plato's (and neoplatonic) arguments and ran with it or did they provide new arguments for Realism and rebuttals for Nominalism? Were these rebuttals more experimental, by showing their mystical experiences and magical experiments that would confirm that a Sacred Language does indeed govern the world?
OMG. This is such a helpful underlying concept to a bunch of things I have been studying. Makes much more sense now. Thank you!!
Another amazing video! Thank you Justin for your tireless work to uncover the lost philosophy of the past. This video really helped me contextualize the role of occult in influencing mainstream philosophy.
Amazed by your ability to speak “plain” English about difficult material.
If you can't communicate clearly it's probably a sign you don't know what you're talking about. Glad, you enjoy the content!
Realism lives!!! (Even if it’s just Mathematical Platonism in cosplay).
Great episode Doc Sledge!
Keep up the exceptional work, Dr Sledge 👏⚒️
I’m astonished. We (Italy) have mandatory class of philosophy in high school and even adolescents have their fair share of medieval philosophy.
Now I'm astonished. And envious. I'm technically guilty of being a witch just for watching this video, where i live. I think that's why i cannot get enough of Dr Sledge, Foolish Fish, let's talk about religion. I've been sheltered from this HEDONISTIC knowledge my whole life... and i don't want my kids to suffer the same ignorance
Oh, do we ever need that here in the US!
That’s cool. In the USA it’s required to have no philosophy, and watch a lot of television shows and listen to lame brainwashing music growing up, and eat lots of unhealthy foods.
Yeah I was surprised to hear the intro. Here in Finland academic philosophy is very acquainted with the medieval period as well. The bachelor-level courses I took in Jyväskylä were constantly discussing scholasticism and you couldn't get through most courses without some mention of Aquinas. An introductory course to the history of philosophy spent about four or five lectures on medieval thought, where I remember we talked at length about neoplatonism specifically, for example. There is a fair amount of research in medieval philosophy also published here. I don't think I've seen a class in my uni on it, but there is some academic literature being written that deals with the occult as well. It comes mostly from history and theological departments though.
Def worth a coffee...thank you
What a great summary of many historical philosophical positions and ideas that are, far too often, presented in a non-contextualized and a-historical way. Interesting that Plato's writings were not available in the 15th Century as much as I thought (assumed) they were (mainly because of Augustine's Neo-Platonist influence on Christianity). I guess that's why I watch your Channel so much, because I'm always learning something new.
Beware those who seek answers, some truths are more scary or overwhelming then the human heart can bare
@@Tsslaelliot369 lovecraft wrote a great passafe about that.
Awesome episode. I'm definitely hear for this sort of topic. One of your best, sir.
I had to rewind to make sure I heard it right - no class on MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY??!!! What??!! It's like studying mathematics without algerba...
How occult and magickal practice influenced the development of natural philosophy and science might also be a noteworthy topic of exploration! I did the tiniest bit of research on that for an undergraduate paper and it was a treasure trove for me. People like Isaac Newton, Jan Baptist van Helmont, and Francis Bacon are notable examples, to name a few. Might be a topic for a future video!
In my freshman year Western Civilization survey course, we had a nickel tour of this area. I remember the lecturer referring to Pico della Mirandolo as 'a teenager who wanted to be an angel'.
Funny, the things that stick after all these years.
Haha, Greg Kaminsky's Celestial Intelligences was crucial for my understanding the interelationship of Kabbalah/Qabalah and that Pico was referred to as "a teenager who wanted to be an angel" would be funnier if not for the fact that so many teenagers openly prefer to embody what is traditionally seen as demonic.
Wasn't so sure I was going to care much about this episode, but once again, Dr, Justin triumphs. He's lent a width, breadth, depth and color to how these competing thought processes have influenced thinking since the Middle Ages right down to this very day.
Fantastic video. Best yet. Fascinating to learn about these changes and how they affect modern world views.
Fantastic video! Probably my favorite one yet. Very helpful for you to trace these philosophical threads through history and provide context for the popularity of hermetic and occult philosophy in the renaissance
"The deeply philosophical position of... other". LOL
A great episode, and honestly it helped me under philosophical realism better than my college courses oh so long ago.
An aside: as a computer scientist (programmer, systems analyst, data scientist, etc.) I wonder if we all are pretty much secretly all philosophical realists since our abstract and synthetic languages cause physical effects.
GOSUB "Part Red Sea" indeed.
(yeah, it's in BASIC. For the rubes. Ya think I'd give an example in my preferred C++ and SQL?)
I had similar wonderings about Jung's concept of psychic facts. Yes they happen inside our minds, but they have real consequences
Informative, insightful - a gift. Subscribed. Will donate. Thank you.
A clear & stimulating exposition, as usual... Many thanks! 🙏🏻
what i love about this channel is hearing how no matter what period of history you pick there are people who believe how they see and explain the world is absolutely true. yet we look back and think 'how could they ever believe that?". then I wonder, in the future what beliefs do we have now that will be scoffed at.
Thank you for all your great work.
Love your work. Very inspiring! I will return to this channel again and again.
I like to see Justin get his intellectual hackles up. That was an excellent one. Thanks
Thank you. This is an outstanding discussion.
Great lecture and your defence of these philosophies even as they clash with your worldview. Cheers!
Second time through. I expect couple of times more at least. So I am able to spin into the questions that I have and come back to it. Thanks for giving that kind of a lecture.
Amazing episode, Justin! Re. the current interest in realism: Coming from an arty / weird humanities bubble, I can testify how the ‘ontological turn’ with OOO and New Materialism, the inclusion of animism from indigenous voices plus more somatic/performative readings of language in queer, affect and black studies has def threw wood on the realist pile. In what seems an almost post medieval approach, language is most often taken as organic matter that matters us and the world as a whole.
Love your work! ❤ Thanks for another great one 🙏
Man... I wish i had you as a philosophy prof at my uni
19:05 - "irrational 'Enlightenment Rationalism' infused..."
19:12 - "I'm very pro-Enlightenment!"
It would rock so hard if we got a Dr. Sledge upload of just continuous ranting about how painfully the term Rationalism is misused today (maybe even touching on how many of its current invokers, like the "effective altruism" crowd, would make our guy Spinoza roll in his grave).
Would rock so hard.
I liked this so much! I laughed a lot, and hopefully in the right places. I stared at it and it all became clear! Thank you Dr Sledge for your insight and knowledge. I will take my minimally necessary amount of beings and buy another t shirt
Thank you for your videos on these topics and keeping knowledge alive!
One of my favorite episodes yet!
Good presentation, good episode! thank you
Thanks
I Love ALL Esoterica videos!
i wish i could grasp the linguistic stuff but it just goes way over my head
Yes, i have come to the same conclusion recently after discovering the rich traditions of the Gnostic and Hermetic traditions and other mystic ones like eastern Tantra, Sufism, Kabbalah, etc that have lots to offer the modern scholar of philosophy and occult mysteries.
would love an episode on sacred SWers/courtesans/priestesses etc in the history of esotericism!
Is it just me or does Justin's Voice have a calming effect?
I'd love to watch you do a review on the James Lindsay's lectures on hermeticism and gnosticism's influence on current philosophy
There are so many other and better ways for me to waste my time
When I started getting into geometry after philosophy. I was like 🤯 lol
This went so hard. Thank you. :D
Happy solstice to me! A new video ❤❤❤
Happiest of solstice to you.
This was a great video, both as a refresher as to what realism and nominalism really refer to, but also recontextualizing, in my mind, the impact of realism on the modern Western philosophical landscape. What I appreciated most was the reminder as to how realism, nominalism, and rationalism were sort of positioned relative to each other.
That being said, as someone who's an extreme anti-realist, I do still think realism as influenced by Platonism and Hermeticism was an ultimately negative development for Western society because its inbuilt metaphysical hierarchy paved the way for many reactionary ideologies and movements that have killed millions. This idea of perfect forms that one can reach via practice/the word is a more often than not dangerous one when applied politically.
Can I get some citations on that? Platonism and Neoplatonism are actually very ‘chill’ (in today’s terminology). These are some of the most peaceful philosophies ever expounded. Hierarchies in platonic tradition are highly fluid for humans, and the notion of reincarnation constantly challenges any entrenched social hierarchy. All of the perfect forms are internally accessible by anyone, merely by contemplation. The forms in reality are diluted and trying to “perfect” reality to match that is unnatural even in Platonism.
@@Sanchuniathon384 The citation list is pretty long in this case. Many of the earliest proto-Fascist and fascist thinkers such as Guenon, Evola, Sebatendorf, et al. were directly inspired by Western esoteric realist traditions and espoused a worldview in which there were transcendental categories of upper and lower caste people, often along racial lines. These ideas directly inspired/influenced the fascist movements of Germany and Italy, and even outside them, this transcendental racial hierarchy was a major component of eugenicist thought.
@@MrGksarathy Yeah I don't think anyone would challenge that. Thule Society even started with breakaway Freemasons.
However, nobody would morally or ethically tie that to esotericism. So why should Platonism, an even older philosophy with greater distance, have anything to do with a revivalist (esoteric) movement, that then became the theoretical seeds for totalitarian systems of the 20th century. This is more like tracking a cross-century historical game of telephone. It's a stretch at best, I'm just not convinced. Sometimes genealogy of thought is normative, sometimes it's not, and that normativity drops off very quickly as time goes on.
@@Sanchuniathon384 Obviously, you can never conclusively say these links are ontologically real, but there is a strong connection between Platonism, the Realist Revival, and the later mysticism/Spiritualism-fascism pipeline. The evidence is there to make a strong link.
Besides, you contend that Platonic hierarchies are fluid with regards to humans, but the very idea that there exist unchanging forms that transcend material existence builds in a rigidity that can far more easily be employed in service of reifying a hierarchical status quo, and it has frequently been used this way. Of course metaphysics can be used by anyone to support any ideology, but I feel realism/Platonism is a much easier friend of conservatism and because the rigidity suggested by the forms/universals is far too restrictive and boring for my taste. I'd rather live in a world where everything and anything can and will constantly change with no true essence.
@@MrGksarathy I am not against status quos, it's not something in me to oppose. I think you're right about rigid hierarchies preferring worldviews that, shockingly, reflect their rigid hierarchies. As a point of clarification, I highly doubt Platonists of today would even subscribe to only unchanging forms. For example, I lean more towards Neoplatonism, and changing forms -- some forms like math don't change, there's nothing to change. But, forms that resemble something more like a strange attractor? Those certainly are changing.
I don't think you'd ever find a Platonist today who would sincerely say you aren't entitled to your worldview, you can freely reside there and be happy to be left alone or to come and go as you please, much as many Platonists would prefer as well.
Besides, it's Plato and Proclus and Plotinus we're talking about. Heidegger was dropped like a hot potato when his black journals came out. Plato was more along the line of "I have made a perfect republic, but where are my perfect people?" In many ways he complained that we aren't inherently able to produce a beautiful Republic. We can learn from its example as an educational tool, and that's what helped inspire things like the Declaration of The Rights of Man in France. The Republic and Laws were used as instructional texts for the Founding Fathers.
There are already examples in the world where we used these materials with a critical eye, and I would dare say even successfully adapted them. Not all of them are bad, in fact many were positive contributions and helped build a healthy skepticism of political power.
Edward Conze weighed in on Nominalism here and there in the 1930s. Some interesting articles if you dig. Loved your video here. ❤
Loved this video!
WOOO!!! Happy friday!
interesting correlation between hermeticism and the rise of realism as represented through geometry. the current resurgence of Egyptian biogeometry, which holds that subtle vibrational energies can be harnessed, contained within shapes (eg soundwaves) that determine its function, as demonstrated in the work of Dr. Ibrahim Karim, seems to score major empirical points for the realism camp
To some extent. Sound is a physical phenomenon. How related the meaning humans associate as corresponding to a sound pattern is another matter that does not necessarily follow from sound itself having an empirically observable effect.
cymatics...the geometric forms from sounds-sands on plate...my hair grows, but pine needles identically stop...Anton has some on the vibrations...
Beautiful and convincing demonstration of the main claim re: the importance of integrating fully into mainstream philosophical studies and without intellectual 'cleansing' the many voices that have been traditionally excluded from the canon, those treated like embarrassing aunties and uncles and ignored (as if, to continue with the metaphor, their genetic input is somehow irrelevant and expunge able.... ah, the folly).
This is gold. Thank you.
hermes crispychristmas is my new band name!
Doc, your channel is amazing, love it when I get notifications about your new content
Your t-shirts are friggin awesome and was compelled to order a couple 🤘🔥🤘
I studied Medieval Philosophy as part of a Philosophy core sequence as part of a BA majoring in Philosophy, at the University of Tennessee in the late 1970s. I wonder if the elimination of that essential history occurred over time, or was it just your school?
I'm wondering if Western Universities fear criticism for discussing the occult?
Another most elegant and important discussion. Again, THANK YOU!! ( I enjoy the Chopin, end of Nocturne, that plays at the beginning and end of every video. )
I will say this because I do feel comfortable enough to say it. I have been searching for a long time on information that relates to the study of magic, history, religion, and spirituality. Your channel has never provided a video that has disappointed in this regard. The reason why I want to study this material so badly is because, for the longest time, it felt and seemed like there is a lot more to learn about spirituality than what is just in the bible.
The bible is still a good book, but it most certainly is not the only book. It is also not just pure occult knowledge, which is a hodgepodge/minefield of bullshit and pseudo-knowledge. My biggest issue that the bible does not explain what a lot of the mysteries of God is, and how a lot of things work. My hunger for this knowledge throughout almost the entirety of my life has been a challenging pursuit, the biggest reason is a spiritual thirst for knowledge in asking the biggest question time and time again. "Why? and How?"
Thank you Dr. Sledge, thank you for what you do! Thank you for providing free academic knowledge on this subject, recommending excellent reading material. For the first time in my life, it certainly feels like my spirituality and knowledge can both become one and I can spiritually breathe.
And to think that I was seriously thinking about joining fressmasonry so that I could get knowledge in this regard, not even really knowing if most freemasons have this type of knowledge or not.
I went to grad school at a jesuit university and I am happy report that they did offer a medieval philosophy course. The topics the professor chose to cover were not my favorite, but still a win in my book!
Yeah....started out loading hay trailers in Lauderdale before the internet. Now I'm watching a Dr. from Pearl, the best I can gather who, by the way, puts out the best content on UA-cam!!!!
They see me summonin'... they hatin'
That's the 3rd time I've laughed out loud in a coffee shop watching this.
Brilliant.
6:11 I think the Werecat is howling in the background here