Douglas Hedley and Stephen Blackwood: Reason, Imagination, and Reality
What connects truth, imagination, and freedom? Stephen Blackwood talks with philosopher-theologian Douglas Hedley about the human mind and its participation in a fundamentally knowable universe. The conversation begins with an introduction to three foundational aspects of the Platonic tradition - beauty, nature, and self-knowledge - and to the influences of that tradition throughout history, extending from modern science and the Enlightenment to contemporary understandings of beauty and human rights. They discuss the mind's extraordinary and complementary capacities of imagination and rationality in making and understanding the world. They conclude with a discussion of dominant contemporary ideologies - both materialist determinism and the philosophies of power - and consider ways of regaining a more adequate standpoint.
Links of possible interest:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem, 'The Eolian Harp'
www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...
Douglas Hedley
www.divinity.cam.ac.uk/direct...
Ralston College
www.ralston.ac
Ralston College Short Courses
www.ralston.ac/humanities-sho...
Stephen Blackwood
www.stephenjblackwood.com
#RalstonCollege
Пікірлер: 8
That was an awesome podcast. Where has this been my whole life. Unbelievable.
You should really do video with audio for your podcast. It would be much more popular if you did.
@reverie4632
4 жыл бұрын
Yes. It is criminal that such high quality content can get only a few hundred views.
Reason, imagination and reality. Or the temporal, abstract and the physical. Figured that out from just self education on Plato. Sucks. Wish something like Ralston was around when I was younger. Finally at least someone gets it.
Satres’ concept of “absurdity” seems more at the heart of modern times. Good discussion though with Plato’s ideas.
imagination is characteristically human but not characteristically Hume-an
The metaphysical and the secular should not be at odds. A religious belief system that does not allow for or value logic and reason will never completely satisfy. A purely secular conception of existence that does not give place for metaphysics will also never satisfy.
Foucault's form of historicism, based on a radical social determinism and relativistic epistemology, ends in nihilism. In some ways it replicates the empty positivism of an of twentieth century Anglo American school on the epistemological front. Although Plato's essentialism may be seen as an alternative, the west has given Plato over two thousand years of study. The west is not about to recover from its current malaise by such a return in the Post Truth society that Foucault has planted us.