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Tag Archives: Aristotle
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: 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
3 Comments
Kalev’s Anti-Blog: Strauss on the Bible
By Kalev Pehme Leo Strauss has the uncanny ability to make the unorthodox seem orthodox. In his treasure-trove of an essay, “Jerusalem and Athens,” Strauss provides us with one of the strangest examinations of the Bible, but he makes it … Continue reading
Posted in Leo Strauss, Slow and Close Reading
Tagged Adam Kadmon, Aristophanes, Aristotle, Bible, Exodus, Genesis, Machiavelli, Maimonides, Plato, Platonism
24 Comments
Kalev’s Anti-Blog: What Strauss Does Not Say About Marsilius
By Kalev Pehme Marsilius of Padua is a shadowy figure in the work of Leo Strauss. Even though Strauss devotes an entire essay to him, there is a vast silence about Marsilius that is rarely ever mentioned by anyone or … Continue reading
Posted in Leo Strauss, Philosophy, Slow and Close Reading
Tagged Aristotle, Averroes, Averroism, Duns Scotus, Ibn Rushd, Islam, Judaism, Machiavelli, Marsilius, Marsilius of Padua, Reformation, Thomas Aquinas
13 Comments
Kalev’s Anti-Blog: Aristotle, Strauss, Pythagoras, and Hippodamus
We must imagine that Pythagoras has been summoned by the tyrant of Phliasians, Leon. By this time, Pythagoras was absorbed knowledge from Egypt, communed with Zoroaster and absorbed the wisdom of the Chaldeans, and initiated into the Orphic circles. He … Continue reading
Posted in Cosmology, Leo Strauss, Philosophy, Slow and Close Reading
Tagged 3, 40, Aristotle, Cicero, forty, Hippodamus, Pascal, Plato, Porphyry, Pythagoras, Pythagorean, Socrates
6 Comments
Kalev’s Anti-Blog: Language, Cosmology Part 2
If there is a cosmos, then language/logos is a communicative part of the cosmos. When we speak of cosmos, we mean a well-ordered whole, and if logos is a part of that, then language, including a part of … Continue reading
Posted in Cosmology, Philosophy, Slow and Close Reading
Tagged Aristotle, finite, ideas, imperceptible, infinite, language, letter, limited, perceptible, Plato, St. Thomas, the Good, unlimited
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Poetry, Philosophy, Slow and Close Reading 
Kalev’s Anti-Blog: On the Introduction of Farabi’s Commentary on Plato’s Laws
The greatest of the Arab philosophers of Medieval times, Alfarabi, wrote a commentary on Plato’s Laws and he wrote a special introduction explaining Plato’s method of writing, which requires the reader to read in a special way. If we read … Continue reading →