Tag: being

4,672 words

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

We ended our last installment in the midst of the pivotal scene in the Tides Restaurant. There, we met Mrs. Bundy, a droll parody of modern, Western, pig-headed scientism. With arch condescension, she refuses to believe Melanie’s stories about the bird attacks. “Impossible!” Mrs. Bundy declares. “Their brain pans aren’t large enough. . . Really, let’s be logical about this,” (more…)

Siegfried & Mime, Arthur Rackham, 1911

2,325 words

Part 4 of 4 (Part 1 here; Part 2 here; Part 3 here)

7. Concluding Reflections

I turn now to some thoughts on how the foregoing treatment of the influence of the past on the present ought to affect our own present, when we finish this essay and return to the real world.

It is a well-known fact that our ancestors acted with awareness of membership in the clan: trying to be worthy of their own ancestors, and not to disgrace them. (more…)

The Norns by Johannes Gehrts, 1889

4,547 words

Part 2 of 4 (Part 1 here; Part 3 here; Part 4 here)

4. Tradition

Having now discussed the clannic being of the individual purely in philosophical terms, I now turn to a consideration of the treatment of this idea in the Germanic tradition.

The first thing we must note is what can be called the “primacy of the past” in that tradition. (more…)

4,538 words

Part 1 of 4 (Part 2 here; Part 3 here; Part 4 here)

1. Introduction

This essay presents an “ontology of the individual.” The theory is new, though it has very old roots. “Ontology” is the branch of philosophy that studies being-as-such, or “being as being,” as Aristotle expressed it.[1] My argument is that the being of an individual person is bound up with that individual’s relation to his family or clan. (more…)