Creative Retrieval

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic, v.1 - Truth of the World (ch. 3, pt. 2)

Balthasar, Theo-Logic, v.1 - Truth of the World (ch. 3, pt. 1)

This finishes up chapter two - "Truth as Freedom" of Balthasar's The-logic, v.1: Truth of the World.

Ch. 2 of Theo-Logic; "Truth as Freedom"

In this lecture I discuss the second half of the first chapter of Balthasar's Theo-Logic. I talk about the relationship of knowledge to creation, and how knowledge requires a knowing of another as other even in its receiving of the other into itself.

I discuss the first half of chapter 1 ("Truth as Nature") of Hans Urs von Balthasar's book Theo-Logic, v.1: Truth of the World. In this lecture I focus on the first two sections ("A. The Preliminary Concept of Truth" and "B. The Subject"). I contrast Balthasar's approach to truth with Kant's Transcendental Idealism.

The main thesis is that to be a knower (subject) is a loving servant of the object which allows the object to be known as other; the subject is an active receiver of objects, which allows them to be true in their unconcealment/disclosure - aletheia.

Sienkiewicz and Jaeger talk about the dynamism of intellect and will towards the Infinite as found in the metaphysical thought of St. Thomas Aquinas.  We talk about how man is self-determining in virtue of those capacities and how his mystery is a revelation of the Mystery towards which he yearns.

In this last episode of our series on Plato's Republic, I discuss book 10, and the notion of imitation.  I argue that the perversion of imitation lies in the fact that it presents reality as an external image which is divorced from reality's internal logos, this ultimately leads man into a pseudo-reality (a false world), enticing him to run and escape from reality by turning to pseudo-realities.  I argue that these pseudo-realities are found now-a-days found not so much in "tragic poetry' but in online communities.  The philosopher is the one who loves reality (which is ultimately in the image of God) over his own self-created pseudo-reality (which is in the image of fallen man).  I also discuss what it would be required to profess believe in Christ not as an act of imitation but as a fruit of adhering to reality.

In this episode I discuss the nature of the tyrannical soul.  The tyrant is lawless in the sense that he is unwilling to submit to any order (in this sense, he tries to live beyond good and evil), and for this reason he becomes enslaved to his own passions.  I discuss the notion of creating needs which enslave us (e.g., social media can be experienced as a created need which we feel enslaved to).  I also compare the tyrant to Raskolnikov from Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. 

In this episode, I move into Book 8 of Plato's Republic, and discuss the way in which injustice is a perversion of justice wrought by the separation of the external and the internal.  Once the appearance is cut off from the reality there is no longer ONE end/goal, and hence what was a single life is now split into two.  I also argue that, for Plato, all deviations of aristocracy are different forms of tyranny.