{"id":3071,"date":"2020-06-26T15:33:31","date_gmt":"2020-06-26T15:33:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/06\/26\/the-owl-of-minerva-and-the-consolations-of-philosophy\/"},"modified":"2020-06-26T15:33:31","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T15:33:31","slug":"the-owl-of-minerva-and-the-consolations-of-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/06\/26\/the-owl-of-minerva-and-the-consolations-of-philosophy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Owl of Minerva and the Consolations of Philosophy"},"content":{"rendered":"

It appears that a tipping point has been reached in America's decline. Our descent into twilight and beyond is probably now irreversible.  Collective race madness blankets the land, the dogs of destruction have been set loose, and the authorities have abdicated.
<\/span><\/p>\n

Should any of this trouble the philosopher? <\/span><\/p>\n

Before he is a citizen, the philosopher is a "spectator of all time and existence" in a marvellous phrase that comes to us from Plato's Republic<\/em> (486a).  The rise and fall of great nations is just more grist for the philosopher's mill.  His true homeland is nothing so paltry as a particular nation, even one as exceptional as the USA, and his fate as a truth-seeker cannot be tied to its fate.  Like the heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly Athens is not bound to a geographical location.<\/span><\/p>\n

National decline is not just grist for the philosopher's mill, however, it is also perhaps a condition of understanding as Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel suggests in the penultimate paragraph of the preface to  The Philosophy of Right<\/em>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

When philosophy paints its grey on grey, then has a shape of life grown old.  By philosophy's grey on grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood.  The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only at the falling of the dusk.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Daughter of Jupiter, Minerva in the mythology of the Greeks is the goddess of wisdom.  And the nocturnal owl is one of its ancient symbols.  The meaning of the Hegelian trope is that understanding, insight, wisdom  arise when the object to be understood has played itself out, when it has actualized and thus exhausted its potentialities, and now faces only decline.<\/span><\/p>\n

When a shape of life has grown old, philosophy paints its grey on grey.  The allusion is to Goethe's Faust<\/em> wherein Mephisto says<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,<\/em><\/span>
Und gr\u00fcn des Lebens goldner Baum.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Grey, dear friend, is all theory<\/span>
And green the golden tree of life.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Philosophy is grey, a "bloodless ballet of categories" (F. H. Bradley) and its object is grey — no longer green and full of life.  And so philosophy paints its grey concepts on the grey object, in this case America on the wane.   The object must be either dead or moribund before it can be fully understood.  Hegel in his famous saying re-animates and gives a new meaning to the Platonic "To philosophize is to learn how to die."<\/span><\/p>\n

In these waning days of a great republic, the owl of Minerva takes flight.  What we lose in vitality we gain in wisdom.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of us, those of the tribe of Plato, not that of Hegel, look beyond time's horizon to the topos ouranos<\/em> where the heavenly Jerusalem and the heavenly Athens are one. We see this world as a vanishing quantity whose very nature is to vanish as all things vain must vanish.<\/span><\/p>\n

The consolations of philosophy are many.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It appears that a tipping point has been reached in America's decline. Our descent into twilight and beyond is probably now irreversible.  Collective race madness blankets the land, the dogs of destruction have been set loose, and the authorities have abdicated. Should any of this trouble the philosopher? Before he is a citizen, the philosopher … Continue reading “The Owl of Minerva and the Consolations of Philosophy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[183,180,107,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boethius","category-decline-of-the-west","category-hegel","category-plato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3071\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}