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Vocabulary of The Philosophy of Pathei-Mathos
Last Updated 23rd November 2012
Abstraction
An abstraction is a manufactured generalization, a hypothesis, a
posited thing, an assumption or assumptions about, an extrapolation
of or from some-thing, or some assumed or extrapolated ideal 'form'
of some-thing. Sometimes, abstractions are generalization based on
some sample(s), or on some median (average) value or sets of values,
observed, sampled, or assumed.
Abstractions can be of some-thing past, in the present, or described
as a goal or an ideal which it is assumed could be attained or
achieved in the future.
All abstractions involve a causal perception, based as they are on
the presumption of a linear cause-and-effect (and/or a dialectic)
and on a posited or an assumed category or classification which
differs in some way from some other assumed or posited
categories/classifications, past, present or future. When applied to
or used to describe/classify/distinguish/motivate living beings,
abstractions involve a causal separation-of-otherness; and when
worth/value/identity (and exclusion/inclusion) is or are assigned to
such a causal separation-of-otherness then there is or there arises
hubris.
Abstractions are often assumed to provide some 'knowledge' or some
'understanding' of some-thing assigned to or described by a
particular abstraction. For example, in respect of the abstraction
of 'race' applied to human beings, and which categorization of human
beings describes a median set of values said or assumed to exist
'now' or in some recent historical past.
According to the philosophy of pathei-mathos, this presumption of
knowledge and understanding by the application of abstractions to
beings - living and otherwise - is false, for abstractions are
considered as a primary means by which the nature of Being and
beings are and have been concealed, requiring as abstractions do the
positing and the continuation of abstractive opposites in relation
to Being and the separation of beings from Being by the process of
ideation and opposites.
Acausal
The acausal is not a generalization – a concept – deriving from a
collocation of assumed, imagined, or causally observed
Phainómenon, but instead is that wordless, conceptless,
a-temporal, knowing which empathy reveals and which a personal πάθει
μάθος and an appreciation of the numinous often inclines us
toward. That is, the acausal is a direct and personal (individual)
revealing of beings and Being which does not depend on denoting or
naming.
What is so revealed is the a-causal nature of some beings, the
connexion which exists between living beings, and how living
beings are emanations of ψυχή.
Thus speculations and postulations regarding the acausal only serve
to obscure the nature of the acausal or distance us from that
revealing of the acausal that empathy and πάθει μάθος and
an appreciation of the numinous provide.
ἀρετή
Arête is the prized Hellenic virtue which can roughly be
translated by the English word 'excellence' but which also implies
what is naturally distinguishable - what is pre-eminent - because it
reveals or shows certain valued qualities such as beauty, honour,
valour, harmony.
Aristotelian Essentials
The essentials which Aristotle enumerated are: (i) Reality
(existence) exists independently of us and our consciousness, and
thus independent of our senses; (ii) our limited understanding of
this independent 'external world' depends for the most part upon
our senses, our faculties – that is, on what we can see, hear or
touch; on what we can observe or come to know via our senses;
(iii) logical argument, or reason, is perhaps the most important
means to knowledge and understanding of and about this 'external
world'; (iv) the cosmos (existence) is, of itself, a reasoned
order subject to rational laws.
Experimental science seeks to explain the natural world – the
phenomenal world – by means of direct, personal observation of it,
and by making deductions, and formulating hypothesis, based on
such direct observation.
The philosophy of pathei-mathos adds the faculty of empathy - and
the knowing so provided by empathy - to these essentials. Part of
the knowing that empathy reveals, or can reveal, concerns the
nature of Being, of beings, and of Time.
ἁρμονίη
ἁρμονίη (harmony) is or can be manifest/discovered by an
individual cultivating wu-wei and σωφρονεῖν (a fair and
balanced personal, individual, judgement).
Compassion
The English word compassion dates from around 1340 CE
and the word in its original sense (and as used in this work) means
benignity, which word derives from the Latin benignitatem,
the sense imputed being of a kind, compassionate, well-mannered
character, disposition, or deed. Benignity came into English
usage around the same time as compassion; for example, the word
occurs in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde [ ii. 483 ] written
around 1374 CE.
Hence, compassion is understood as meaning being kindly disposed
toward and/or feeling a sympathy with someone (or some living being)
affected by pain/suffering/grief or who is enduring vicissitudes.
The word compassion itself is derived from com, meaning
together-with, combined with pati, meaning
to-suffer/to-endure and derived from the classical Latin passiō.
Thus useful synonyms for compassion, in this original sense, are compassivity
and benignity.
Cosmic Perspective
The Cosmic Perspective refers to our place in the Cosmos, to the
fact that we human beings are simply one fragile fallible mortal
biological life-form on one planet orbiting one star in one galaxy
in a Cosmos of billions of galaxies. Thus in terms of this
perspective all our theories, our ideas, our beliefs, our
abstractions are merely the opinionated product of our limited
fallible Earth-bound so-called ‘intelligence’, an ‘intelligence’,
an understanding, we foolishly, arrogantly, pridefully have a
tendency to believe in and exalt as if we are somehow ‘the centre
of the Universe’ and cosmically important.
The Cosmic Perspective inclines us – or can incline us – toward
wu-wei, toward avoiding the error of hubris, toward humility, and
thus toward an appreciation of the numinous.
δαίμων
A δαίμων is not one of the pantheon of major Greek gods –
θεοί - but rather a lesser type of divinity who might be
assigned by those gods to bring good fortune or misfortune to human
beings and/or watch over certain human beings and especially
particular numinous (sacred) places.
Descriptor
A descriptor is a word, a term, used to describe some-thing which
exists and which is personally observed, or is discovered, by means
of our senses (including the faculty of empathy).
A descriptor differs from an ideation, category, or abstraction,
in that a descriptor describes what-is as 'it' is observed,
according to its physis (its nature) whereas an abstraction, for
example, denotes what is presumed/assumed/idealized, past or
present or future. A descriptor relies on, is derived from,
describes, individual knowing and individual judgement; an
abstraction relies on something abstract, impersonal, such as some
opinion/knowing/judgement of others or some assumptions, theory,
or hypothesis made by others.
An example of a descriptor is the term 'violent' [using physical
force sufficient to cause bodily harm or injury to a person or
persons] to describe the observed behaviour of an individual.
Another example would be the term 'extremist' to describe - to
denote - a person who treats or who has been observed to treat
others harshly/violently in pursuit of some supra-personal objective
of a political or of a religious nature.
δίκη
Depending on context, δίκη could be the judgement of an
individual (or Judgement personified), or the natural and the
necessary balance, or the correct/customary/ancestral way, or what
is expected due to custom, or what is considered correct and
natural, and so on.
A personified Judgement - the Δίκην
of Hesiod - is the goddess of the natural balance, evident in the
ancestral customs, the ways, the way of life, the ethos, of a
community, whose judgement, δίκη, is "in accord with", has
the nature or the character of, what tends to restore such balance
after some deed or deeds by an individual or individuals have upset
or disrupted that balance. This sense of δίκη as one's
ancestral customs is evident, for example, in Homer (Odyssey, III,
244).
In the philosophy of pathei-mathos, the term Δίκα - spelt
thus in a modern way with a capital Δ - is sometimes used to
intimate a new, a particular and numinous, philosophical principle,
and differentiate Δίκα from the more general δίκη.
As a numinous principle, or axiom, Δίκα thus suggests what
lies beyond and what was the genesis of δίκη personified
as the goddess, Judgement – the goddess of natural balance, of the
ancestral way and ancestral customs.
Empathy
Etymologically, this fairly recent English word, used to translate
the German Einfühlung, derives, via the late Latin sympathia,
from the Greek συμπάθεια - συμπαθής - and is thus formed from the
prefix σύν (sym) together with παθ- [root of πάθος] meaning enduring/suffering,
feeling: πάσχειν, to endure/suffer.
As used and defined by the philosophy of pathei-mathos, empathy - ἐμπάθεια
- is a natural human faculty: that is, a noble intuition about (a
revealing of) another human being or another living being. When
empathy is developed and used, as envisaged by that way of life,
then it is a specific and extended type of συμπάθεια. That
is, it is a type of and a means to knowing and understanding another
human being and/or other living beings - and thus differs in nature
from compassion.
Empathic knowing is different from, but supplementary and
complimentary to, that knowing which may be acquired by means of the
Aristotelian essentials of conventional philosophy and experimental
science.
Empathy reveals or can reveal the nature (the physis) - sans
abstractions/ideations/words - of Being, of beings, and of Time.
This revealing is of the the a-causal nature of Being, and of how
beings have their genesis in the separation-of-otherness; and thus
how we human beings are but causal, mortal, fallible, microcosmic
emanations of ψυχή.
Enantiodromia
The unusual compound Greek word ἐναντιοδρομίας
occurs in a summary of the philosophy of Heraclitus by Diogenes
Laërtius.
Enantiodromia is the term used, in the philosophy of pathei-mathos,
to describe the revealing, the process, of perceiving, feeling,
knowing, beyond causal appearance and the separation-of-otherness,
and thus when what has become separated – or has been incorrectly
perceived as separated – returns to the wholeness, the unity, from
whence it came forth. When, that is, beings are understood in their
correct relation to Being, beyond the causal abstraction of
different/conflicting ideated opposites, and when as a result, a
reformation of the individual, occurs. A relation, an appreciation
of the numinous, that empathy and pathei-mathos provide, and which
relation and which appreciation the accumulated pathei-mathos of
individuals over millennia have made us aware of or tried to inform
us or teach us about.
An important and a necessary part of enantiodromia involves a
discovery, a knowing, an acceptance, and - as prelude - an interior
balancing within individuals, of what has hitherto been perceived
and designated as the apparent opposites described by terms
(descriptors) such as 'muliebral' and 'masculous'.
The balance attained by - which is - enantiodromia is that of simply
feeling, accepting, discovering, the empathic, the human, the
personal, scale of things and thus understanding our own
fallibility-of-knowing, our limitations as a human being
ἔρις
Strife; discord; disruption; a quarrel between friends or kin. As in
the Odyssey:
ἥ τ᾽
ἔριν Ἀτρεΐδῃσι
μετ᾽ ἀμφοτέροισιν
ἔθηκε.
Who placed strife between those two sons of Atreus
Odyssey, 3, 136
According to the recounted tales of Greek mythology attributed to
Aesop, ἔρις was caused by, or was a consequence of, the
marriage between a personified πόλεμος (as the δαίμων
of kindred strife) and a personified ὕβρις (as the δαίμων
of arrogant pride) with Polemos rather forlornly following Hubris
around rather than vice versa. Eris is thus the child of Polemos and
Hubris.
Extremism
By extreme is meant to be harsh, so that an extremist
is a person who tends toward harshness, or who is harsh, or who
supports/incites harshness, in pursuit of some objective, usually of
a political or a religious nature. Here, harsh is: rough,
severe, a tendency to be unfeeling, unempathic.
Hence extremism is considered to be: (a) the result of
such harshness, and (b) the principles, the causes, the
characteristics, that promote, incite, or describe the harsh action
of extremists. In addition, a fanatic is considered to be someone
with a surfeit of zeal or whose enthusiasm for some objective, or
for some cause, is intemperate.
In the terms of the philosophy/way of pathei-mathos, an extremist is
someone who commits the error of hubris; and error which
enantiodromia - following from πάθει μάθος - can sometimes
correct or forestall. The genesis of extremism - be such extremism
personal, or described as political or religious - is when the
separation-of-otherness is used as a means of personal and
collective identity and pride, with some 'others' - or 'the others'
- assigned to a category considered less worthy than the category we
assign ourselves and 'our kind/type' to.
Extremist ideologies manifest an unbalanced, an excessive, masculous
nature.
εὐταξία
The quality, the virtue, of self-restraint,
of a balanced, well-mannered conduct especially under adversity
or duress, of which Cicero wrote:
Haec autem scientia continentur ea, quam Graeci εὐταξίαν
nominant, non hanc, quam interpretamur modestiam, quo in verbo
modus inest, sed illa est εὐταξία, in qua intellegitur ordinis
conservatio
Those two qualities are evident in that way described by the
Greeks as εὐταξίαν although what is meant by εὐταξία is not what
we mean by the moderation of the moderate, but rather what we
consider is restrained behaviour... [My
translation]
De Officiis, Liber Primus,
142
Honour
The English word honour dates from around 1200 CE,
deriving from the Latin honorem (meaning refined, grace,
beauty) via the Old French (and thence Anglo-Norman) onor/onur.
As used by The Way of Pathei-Mathos, honour means an instinct for
and an adherence to what is fair, dignified, and valourous. An
honourable person is thus someone of manners, fairness, natural
dignity, and valour.
In respect of early usage of the term, two quotes may be of
interest. The first, from c. 1393 CE, is taken from
a poem, in Middle English, by John Gower:
And riht in such a maner wise
Sche bad thei scholde hire don servise,
So that Achilles underfongeth
As to a yong ladi belongeth
Honour, servise and reverence.
John Gower, Confessio Amantis. Liber Quintus vv.
2997-3001 [Macaulay, G.C., ed. The Works of John Gower.
Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1901]
The second is from several centuries later:
" Honour - as something distinct from mere probity, and
which supposes in gentlemen a stronger abhorrence of perfidy,
falsehood, or cowardice, and a more elevated and delicate sense of
the dignity of virtue, than are usually found in vulgar minds."
George Lyttelton. History of the
Life of Henry the Second. London, Printed for J.
Dodsley. M DCC LXXV II [1777] (A new ed., cor.) vol 3, p.178
In the philosophy of pathei-mathos, the personal virtue of honour is
considered to be a presencing, a grounding, an expression, of ψυχή
- of Life, of our φύσις - occurring when the insight (the
knowing) of a developed empathy inclines us toward a compassion that
is, of necessity, balanced by σωφρονεῖν and in accord with
δίκη. That is, as a means to live, to behave, as empathy
intimates we can or should in order to avoid committing the folly,
the error, of ὕβρις, in order not to cause suffering, and
in order to re-present, to acquire, ἁρμονίη.
Humility
Humility is used, in a spiritual context, to refer to that
gentleness, that modest demeanour, that understanding, which derives
from an appreciation of the numinous and also from one's own
admitted uncertainty of knowing and one's acknowledgement of past
mistakes. An uncertainty of knowing, an acknowledgement of mistakes,
that often derive from πάθει μάθος.
Humility is thus the natural human balance that offsets the
unbalance of hubris (ὕβρις) - the balance that offsets the
unbalance of pride and arrogance, and the balance that offsets the
unbalance of that certainty of knowing which is one basis for
extremism, for extremist beliefs, for fanaticism and intolerance.
That is, humility is a manifestation of the natural balance of Life;
a restoration of ἁρμονίη, of δίκη, of σωφρονεῖν
- of those qualities and virtues - that hubris and extremism,
that ἔρις and πόλεμος, undermine, distance us from,
and replace.
Ideation
To posit or to construct an ideated form - an assumed perfect
(ideal) form or category or abstraction - of some-thing, based on
the belief or the assumption that what is observed by the senses, or
revealed by observation, is either an 'imperfect copy' or an
approximation of that thing, which the additional assumption that
such an ideated form contains or in some way expresses (or can
express) 'the essence' or 'the ethos' of that thing and of similar
things.
Ideation also implies that the ideated form is or can be or should
be contrasted with what it considered or assumed to be its
'opposite'.
Immediacy-of-the-Moment
The term the 'immediacy-of-the-moment' describes both (i) the nature
and the extent of the acausal knowing that empathy and pathei-mathos
provide, and (ii) the nature and extent of the morality of the
philosophy of pathei-mathos.
Empathy, for example, being a natural and an individual faculty, is
limited in range and application, just as our faculties of sight and
hearing are limited in range and application. These limits extend to
only what is direct, immediate, and involve personal interactions
with other humans or with other living beings. There is therefore,
for the philosophy of pathei-mathos, an 'empathic scale of things'
and an acceptance of our limitations of personal knowing and
personal understanding. An acceptance of (i) the unwisdom, the
hubris, of arrogantly making assumptions about who and what are
beyond the range of our empathy and outside of our personal
experience/beyond the scope of our pathei-mathos.
Morality, for the philosophy of pathei-mathos, is a result of
individuals using the faculty of empathy; a consequence of the
insight and the understanding (the acausal knowing) that empathy
provides for individuals in the immediacy-of-the-moment. Thus,
morality is considered to reside not in some abstract theory or some
moralistic schemata presented in some written text which individuals
have to accept and try and conform or aspire to, but rather in
personal virtues - such as such as compassion and fairness, and εὐταξία - that
arise or which can arise naturally through empathy, πάθει μάθος,
and thus from an awareness and appreciation of the numinous.
Innocence
Innocence is regarded as an attribute of those who, being personally
unknown to us, are therefore unjudged us by and who thus are given
the benefit of the doubt. For this presumption of innocence of
others – until direct personal experience, and individual and
empathic knowing of them, prove otherwise – is the fair, the
reasoned, the numinous, the human, thing to do.
Empathy and πάθει μάθος incline us toward treating other
human beings as we ourselves would wish to be treated; that is they
incline us toward fairness, toward self-restraint, toward being
well-mannered, and toward an appreciation and understanding of
innocence.
Masculous
Masculous is a term, a descriptor, used to refer to certain traits,
abilities, and qualities that are conventionally and historically
associated with men, such as competitiveness, aggression, a certain
harshness, the desire to organize/control, and a desire for
adventure and/or for conflict/war/violence/competition over and
above personal love and culture. Extremist ideologies manifest an
unbalanced, an excessive, masculous nature.
Masculous is from the Latin masculus and occurs, for
example, in some seventeenth century works such as one by William
Struther: "This is not only the language of Canaan, but also the
masculous Schiboleth." True Happines, or, King Davids Choice:
Begunne In Sermons, And Now Digested Into A Treatise.
Edinbvrgh, 1633
Muliebral
The term muliebral derives from the classical Latin word muliebris,
and in the context the philosophy of Pathei-Mathos refers to those
positive traits, abilities, and qualities that are conventionally
and historically associated with women, such as empathy,
sensitivity, gentleness, compassion, and a desire to love and be
loved over and above a desire for conflict/adventure/war.
Numinous
The numinous is what manifests or can manifest or remind us of (what
can reveal) the natural balance of ψυχή; a balance which ὕβρις
upsets. This natural balance - our being as human beings - is or can
be manifest to us in or by what is harmonious, or what reminds us of
what is harmonious and beautiful. In a practical way, it is what we
regard or come to appreciate as 'sacred' and dignified; what
expresses our developed humanity and thus places us, as individuals,
in our correct relation to ψυχή, and which relation is that
we are but one mortal emanation of ψυχή.
Pathei-Mathos
The Greek term πάθει μάθος derives from The Agamemnon of
Aeschylus (written c. 458 BCE), and can be
interpreted, or translated, as meaning learning from adversary,
or wisdom arises from (personal) suffering; or personal
experience is the genesis of true learning.
When understood in its Aeschylean context, it implies that for we
human beings pathei-mathos possesses a numinous, a living,
authority. That is, the understanding that arises from one's own
personal experience - from formative experiences that involve some
hardship, some grief, some personal suffering - is often or could
be more valuable to us (more alive, more relevant, more
meaningful) than any doctrine, than any religious faith, than any
words/advice one might hear from someone else or read in some
book.
Thus, pathei-mathos, like empathy, offers we human beings a certain
conscious understanding, a knowing; and, when combined,
pathei-mathos and empathy are or can be a guide to wisdom, to a
particular conscious knowledge concerning our own nature (our
physis), our relation to Nature, and our relation to other human
beings, leading to an appreciation of the numinous and an
appreciation of virtues such as humility and εὐταξία.
Πόλεμος
Heraclitus fragment 80
Πόλεμος is not some abstract 'war' or strife or kampf, but
rather that which is or becomes the genesis of beings from Being
(the separation of beings from Being), and thus not only that which
manifests as δίκη but also accompanies ἔρις because
it is the nature of Πόλεμος that beings, born because of
and by ἔρις, can be returned to Being, become bound together
- be whole - again by enantiodromia.
According to the recounted tales of Greek mythology attributed to
Aesop, ἔρις was caused by, or was a consequence of, the
marriage between a personified πόλεμος (as the δαίμων
of kindred strife) and a personified ὕβρις (as the δαίμων
of arrogant pride) with Polemos rather forlornly following Hubris
around rather than vice versa. Thus Eris is the child of Polemos and
Hubris.
Furthermore, Polemos was originally the δαίμων (not the
god) of kindred strife, whether familial, of friends, or of one’s πόλις
(one’s clan and their places of dwelling). Thus, to describe
Polemos, as is sometimes done, as the god of war, is doubly
incorrect.
Physis (φύσις)
φύσις suggests either (i) the Homeric usage of nature or
character of a person, as for example in Odyssey, Book
10, vv. 302-3, and also in Herodotus (2.5.2):
Αἰγύπτου γὰρ φύσις ἐστὶ τῆς χώρης τοιήδε
or (ii) Φύσις (Physis) as in Heraclitus fragment
123 - that is, the natural nature of all beings, beyond their
outer appearance, and which natural nature we, as human beings,
have a natural [an unconscious] inclination to conceal; either
because of ὕβρις or through an ignorance, an unknowing,
of ourselves as an emanation of ψυχή.
In terms of the nature or the character of an individual:
σωφρονεῖν ἀρετὴ μεγίστη, καὶ σοφίη ἀληθέα λέγειν καὶ
ποιεῖν κατὰ φύσιν ἐπαίοντας
Most excellent is balanced reasoning, for that skill can
tell inner character from outer.
Heraclitus fragment 112
Separation-of-Otherness
The separation-of-otherness is a term used to describe the implied
or assumed causal separateness of living beings, a part of which is
the distinction we make (instinctive or otherwise) between our self
and the others. Another part is assigning our self, and
the-others, to (or describing them and us by) some
category/categories, and to which category/categories we ascribe (or
to which category/categories has/have been ascribed) certain
qualities or attributes.
Given that a part of such ascription/denoting is an assumption or
assumptions of worth/value/difference and of inclusion/exclusion,
the separation-of-otherness is the genesis of hubris; causes and
perpetuates conflict and suffering; and is a path away from ἁρμονίη,
δίκη, and thus from wisdom.
The separation-of-otherness conceals the nature of Beings and
beings; a nature which empathy and pathei-mathos can reveal.
The Good
For the philosophy of Pathei-Mathos, 'the good' is considered to be
what is fair; what alleviates or does not cause suffering; what is
compassionate; what is honourable; what is reasoned and balanced.
This knowing of the good arises from the (currently underused and
undeveloped) natural human faculty of empathy, and which empathic
knowing is different from, supplementary and complimentary to, that
knowing which may be acquired by means of the Aristotelian
essentials of conventional philosophy and experimental science.
Time
In the philosophy of pathei-mathos, Time is considered to be an
expression of the nature - the φύσις - of beings, and
thus, for living beings, is a variable emanation of ψυχή,
differing from being to being, and representing how that living
being can change (is a fluxion) or may change or has changed, which
such change (such fluxions) being a-causal.
Time - as conventionally understood and as measured/represented by a
terran-calendar with durations marked days, weeks, and years - is
therefore regarded as an abstraction, and an abstraction which tends
to conceal the nature of living beings.
ὕβρις
ὕβρις (hubris) is the error of personal insolence, of
going beyond the proper limits set by: (a) reasoned (balanced)
judgement – σωφρονεῖν – and by (b) an awareness, a
personal knowing, of the numinous, and which knowing of the
numinous can arise from empathy and πάθει μάθος.
Hubris upsets the natural balance – is contrary to ἁρμονίη
[harmony] – and often results from a person or persons striving
for or clinging to some causal abstraction.
According to The Way of Pathei-Mathos, ὕβρις disrupts -
and conceals - our appreciation of what is numinous and thus of
what/whom we should respect, classically understood as ψυχή
and θεοί and Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες
and δαιμόνων and those sacred
places guarded or watched over by δαιμόνων.
Way
The philosophy of pathei-mathos makes a distinction between a
religion and a spiritual Way of Life. One of the differences being
that a religion requires and manifests a codified ritual and
doctrine and a certain expectation of conformity in terms of
doctrine and ritual, as well as a certain organization beyond the
local community level resulting in particular individuals assuming
or being appointed to positions of authority in matters relating
to that religion. In contrast, Ways are more diverse and more an
expression of a spiritual ethos, of a customary, and often
localized, way of doing certain spiritual things, with there
generally being little or no organization beyond the community
level and no individuals assuming - or being appointed by some
organization - to positions of authority in matters relating to
that ethos.
Religions thus tend to develope an organized regulatory and
supra-local hierarchy which oversees and appoints those, such as
priests or religious teachers, regarded as proficient in spiritual
matters and in matters of doctrine and ritual, whereas adherents
of Ways tend to locally and informally and communally, and out of
respect and a personal knowing, accept certain individuals as
having a detailed knowledge and an understanding of the ethos and
the practices of that Way.
Many spiritual Ways have evolved into religions.
Wisdom
Wisdom is both the ability of reasoned - a balanced - judgement,
σωφρονεῖν, a discernment; and a particular conscious
knowledge concerning our own nature, and our relation to Nature,
to other life and other human beings: rerum divinarum et humanarum. Part of
this knowledge is of how we human beings are often balanced
between honour and dishonour; balanced between ὕβρις and
ἀρετή; between our animalistic desires, our passions, and
our human ability to be noble, to morally develope ourselves; a
balance manifest in our known ability to be able to control, to
restrain, ourselves, and thus find and follow a middle way, of ἁρμονίη.
Wu-wei
Wu-wei is a Taoist term used in The Way of Pathei-Mathos/The
Numinous Way to refer to a personal 'letting-be' deriving from a
feeling, a knowing, that an essential part of wisdom is
cultivation of an interior personal balance and which cultivation
requires acceptance that one must work with, or employ, things
according to their nature, their φύσις, for to do
otherwise is incorrect, and inclines us toward, or is, being
excessive – that is, toward the error, the unbalance, that
is hubris, an error often manifest in personal arrogance,
excessive personal pride, and insolence - that is, a disrespect
for the numinous.
In practice, the knowledge, the understanding, the intuition, the
insight that is wu-wei is a knowledge, an understanding, that can
be acquired from empathy, πάθει μάθος, and by a knowing
of and an appreciation of the numinous. This knowledge and
understanding is of wholeness, and that life, things/beings,
change, flow, exist, in certain natural ways which we human beings
cannot change however hard we might try; that such a hardness of
human trying, a belief in such hardness, is unwise, un-natural,
upsets the natural balance and can cause misfortune/suffering for
us and/or for others, now or in the future. Thus success lies in
discovering the inner nature (the physis) of
things/beings/ourselves and gently, naturally, slowly, working
with this inner nature, not striving against it.
ψυχή
Life qua being. Our being as a living existent is
considered an emanation of ψυχή. Thus ψυχή is what
'animates' us and what gives us our nature, φύσις, as
human beings. Our nature is that of a mortal fallible being veering
between σωφρονεῖν (thoughtful reasoning, and thus
fairness) and ὕβρις.
°°°°°°°
Sources
Conspectus of The Philosophy of Pathei-Mathos
Recuyle of the Philosophy of Pathei-Mathos
(pdf)
Time and The Separation-of-Otherness
cc David
Myatt 2012
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