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Author Archives: Kalev Pehme
Kalev’s Anti-Blog: Remarks on ‘Macbeth’
By Kalev Pehme Of the work of Shakespeare, no play has as an extensive elaboration of preternatural or (perhaps) supernatural beings as Macbeth. That the three witches are preternatural as opposed to supernatural means that the old crones do not … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Poetry, Slow and Close Reading
Tagged "tale told by an idiot", "unsex me here", Banquo, Birnam Wood, Cawdor, Christian, Christianity, Coleridge, divine law, Duncan, Dunsinane, England, Fleance, Glamis, Hamlet, James I, Lady Macbeth, legitimacy, Macbeth, Macduff, nature, occult, preternatural, Queen Elizabeth I, Scotland, Shakespeare, suicide, supernatural, Tallyrand, Thane of Fife, three fates, three witches, tyranny, weird sisters, wyrd sisters
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Kalev’s Anti-Blog: A Post Scriptum: Maimonides So Close Yet So Far…
In my previous post on Maimonides’s Letter on Astrology, I noted that Leo Strauss had implied that Maimonides had accepted the philosopher’s distinction between god as a remote cause the affects of proximate cause on human beings. I had thought … Continue reading
Posted in astrology, Cosmology, Leo Strauss, Philosophy
Tagged accidental, actual, Aristotle, convention, conventional, efficient cause, essential, final cause, formal cause, four cause, Letter on Astrology, Maimonides, material cause, mutakallimum, natural, nature, particular, Philosophy, potential, proximate cause, remote cause, separate intelligences, The City and Man, theos, tort law, Treatise on the Art of Logic, universal
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Kalev’s Anti-Blog: Maimonides’ ‘Letter on Astrology,’ Leo Strauss, and Some Luck
By Kalev Pehme For my friend Scott Alexander, one of the best readers of Maimonides; may he get the recognition he well deserves… One realizes when reading Maimonides’s Letter on Astrology, a comparatively short work, that it is an immensely … Continue reading
Posted in astrology, Cosmology, Leo Strauss, Philosophy, Slow and Close Reading
Tagged 6:10, Alexander of Aphrodisias, angelology, angels, Aristotle, Astrology, Averroes, Book of Job, Caldeans, Canaan, chance, destruction of the Temple, diaspora, doxa, Egypt, endoxa, Epistle on Astrology, fortuna, Guide for the Perplexed, Ibn Rushd, Internet, Jerusalem, John Paul II, Jyotish, Kabbalah, karma, Letter on Astrology, luck, Machiavelli, Maimonides, Masada, Messiah, Messianaic age, Mishneh Torah, Moses, particular providence, Plato, poorvapunya, providence, Ptolemy, Rambam, Randall Jarrell, Sabeans, Sabians, schekhinah, Second Temple, separate intelligences, Song of Songs, sphere, St. Isidore, St. Isidore of Seville, Thomas Aquinas, Tiberius, Torah, tuche, tyche, Vedic astrology
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Kalev’s Anti-Blog: The Renaissance and the post-Renaissance World of Rembrandt and Caravaggio and the Human Soul
The Renaissance died in 1620 in much the same way that the same way as the US Depression started with the stock market crash of `1929. There are many reasons for it, but if we want to be very contemporary … Continue reading
Posted in Leo Strauss, Mythology, Philosophy
Tagged 1620, Archbishop Laud, Aristotle, Bacon, Bernini, Birth of Venus, Botticelli, Caravaggio, Cardinal Richelieu, Count-Duke of Olivares, Counter-Reformation, da Vinci, Descartes, Dr. Johnson, Duke of Buckingham, Duke of Lerma, Earl of Richmond, Frank O’Hara, Giovanni Bellini, Guido Reni, Hobbes, Howard B. White, Howard White, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Juliet, King Lear, Kojeve, Larry Rivers, Machiavelli, Maria de Medicis, Michelangelo, mimesis, Oliver Cromwell, Pope Julius II, Poussin, Primavera, Puritans, Reformation, Rembrandt, Renaissance, Richard II, Richard III, Romeo, Rousseau, self, Shakespeare, Sistine Chapel, soul, Spinoza, Thirty Years War, Titian, Valázquez
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Kalev’s Anti-Blog: A Short Story About Chicago and the Occult in the 1960s
Dark Forces By Kalev Pehme I was a young man in my first year in college when I was beaten by the Chicago police at a demonstration against the War in Vietnam. Fortunately, although one of the pale-blue helmeted officers … Continue reading
Kalev’s Anti-Blog: Math and Reality
By Kalev Pehme In one of the great books of the 20th century, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, Jacob Klein delineated the difference between ancient and modern mathematics. How we understand mathematics truly speaks to how we … Continue reading
Posted in Cosmology, Philosophy
Tagged Aristotle, Big Bang, Cartesian duality, Descartes, formal mathematical language, Jacob Klein, mathematics, physics, Plato, Pythagoreans, reality
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Kalev ‘s Anti-Blog: Words Fail
By Kalev Pehme In an essay on Thucydides, Leo Strauss writes: “Wisdom cannot be show by being spoken of. How then can it be shown at all? Wisdom is the highest form of the life of man. How can the … Continue reading
Posted in Leo Strauss, Philosophy, Slow and Close Reading
Tagged aletheia, Colin Powell, contraries, Greekness, lethe, parts, peace, the whole, Thucydides, war, wisdom
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Kalev’s Anti-Blog: When Women Go Mad or are Possessed
They had many names: Maenad (Mad Woman); Thyiad (Rushing Woman); Phoibad (Inspired Woman); Lyssad (Raging Woman). These women were the followers of the god Dionysos in his many forms. Periodically, woman en masse would go to the hills and howl, … Continue reading
Posted in Dionysos, Mythology, Philosophy, Poetry
Tagged Alexander the Great, Ares, Athens, Bacchae, Bessi, Christianity, Euripides, Evoe, Freud, Herodotus, Hobbes, Islam, Jews, Lyssad, Macedonia, Maenad, mourning, Muslims, Olympias, orgies, Phillip, Phoibad, Plutarch, Robert Graves, Satrae, Semele, snakes, Thrace, Thyiad, White Goddess, Xerxes, Zeus
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Kalev’s Anti-Blog: The War Against Eros
By Kalev Pehme I dedicate this piece of Tawnya Gunn, Will Kolodzie, and Laurie Berry The early Christians knew the obvious: An erotic man is a man who wants to be a god, not worship the god. So instead of … Continue reading
Posted in Mythology, Philosophy, Poetry
Tagged capitalism, Christianity, eros, erotic, Hayak, Heidegger, Hobbes, joyless quest for joy, justice, Leo Strauss, Marx, modernity, philia, Plato, Rousseau, Socrates, will to power
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Poetry, Philosophy, Slow and Close Reading 