Dear Alan et al
Thanks for that -
sounds interesting - although
I sometimes think its a shame about the
term
'greco-roman egypt' which gives the impression
that
the greek and roman influence is more significant than the
egyptian - whilst imo it should really be the other way round
-
maybe something like 'post pharaonic magick'
??
Makes a difference in that its notable that Magee's
book description mentions nearly everything apart from
magick -
Brian Morton questioned the connection between mysticism
(as in Hegel) with magick. There are some theorists who in the past have tried
to drive a wedge between the two but i think thats becoming increasingly
untenable -
seems to me that a great many (although perhaps not the
majority) of magicians see mysticism as part of the 'theoretical' or 'religious'
componant of the tradition.
'love and do what you will'
mogg
Glenn Alexander
Magee's controversial book argues that Hegel was decisively influenced by the
Hermetic tradition, a body of thought with roots in Greco-Roman Egypt. In the
middle ages and modern period, the Hermetic tradition became entwined with such
mystical strands of thought as alchemy, Kabbalism, Millenarianism,
Rosicrucianism, and theosophy. Recent scholarship has drawn connections between
the Hermetic "counter-tradition" and many modern thinkers, including Leibniz and
Newton.
Magee contends that Hegel accepted the central Hermetic teaching
that God is complete only when he becomes known by the Hermetic adept. Magee
traces the influence on Hegel of such Hermetic thinkers as Baader, Böhme, Bruno,
and Paracelsus, and shows that he shared their entire range of interests,
including a fascination with occult and paranormal phenomena.
Hegel and
the Hermetic Tradition covers Hegel's entire philosophical corpus, showing that
his engagement with Hermeticism lasted throughout his entire career and
intensified during his final years in Berlin. Viewing Hegel as a Hermetic
thinker has implications for a more complete understanding of the modern
philosophical tradition, and German idealism in particular.Quite
a bit on Leibniz.
Best wishes
Alan Pritchard MPhil FCLIP
MBCS
ALCHEMY: a bibliography of English-language writings
2nd
(Internet) edition at
http://www.cix.co.uk/~apritchard
On 4/17/07, Brian
Morton <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
Oh,
I guess I should introduce myself
I'm Brian Morton a professor of
philosophy from Indiana State
University, with some interests in what
magic and philosophy have to say
to each other.
Hegel scholars
often point to the influence of Jacob Boehme on Hegel.
Boehme wrote often
of the three principles of alchemy, so its not
impossible that Hegel was
influenced by the alchemical tradition through
Boehme on
this. Likewise, a lot of Hegel's heretical protestant
stuff
about the role of geist in history, looks like Boehme or the
earlier
Joachim of Fiore. The idea in these guys is that the
Hebrew's lived
mostly under the shadow of God the Father, the
early/medieval Christians
under the shadow of God the Son, but that in
the near future (Fiore), or
present (Boehme/Hegel), the 3rd person, God
the Holy Spirit will be the
primary engine of history. Its
certainly a mystical view of history,
but magical?
maybe. Right after Hegel, his follower Marx, took
the
dialectic and turned it into the Material Dialectic. Its
pretty hard to
look at Hegel these days without the shadow of Marx
getting in the way.
Likewise, Hegel was popular in late 19th century
Britain, but 20th
century British philosophy was built on rejecting
him. In philosophy he
might be beginning to re-emerge from
Marx's shadow again a little (as in
the thought of Brandom, McDowell, or
Singer). Fukayama had a very Hegel
influenced (and very
neo-conservative) book a few years ago, but I
haven't seen a lot of other
history that was particularly Hegelian,
(unless it was also relatively
Marx-influenced) recently. Have any
of
you?
>>> Mandrake of Oxford <[log in to unmask]>
4/17/2007 12:52 PM
>>>
Sebastian
Welcome - interesting
thoughts - my main encounter with Hegel is
through
Borchardt's
'Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy' - which i
believe is
a
Hegelian view of history with much talk of the Geist - i
wonder
whether
this view of history in terms of 'spirit of an age' is
also quite a
'magical' view - and how this sits with modern history
writing??
mogg
: )
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-----Original
Message-----
From: Society for The Academic Study of
Magic
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of Sebastian
Alexis
Ghelerman
Sent: 17 April
2007 14:51
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject:
Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] magic and logic
Hello
everyone. Ím new on the list. Ím a social anthropologyst
from
Argentina. Ím really interested in magic and its development
along
history.
A hint regarding this
topic:
Have you considered that the hegelian dialectic
has much in common
with
some philosophical bases of the alchemy?. For
e.g: the process
Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis uses the same logic pattern
as the "Solve
et
Coagula", where "Solve" is the dissolution of the
prime matter, "et"
is
related to the purification process of the stone
and "Coagula" is the
solidification of the result of the other two. My
thought, and it́s
only an
hypothesis, is that during medieval times
and beyond, as other author
describe, the philosophical abstraction was
integrated with the
religious
contents and magical "thought" and it́s
only through Bacon, Newton,
Descartes and so on, that the science as an
abstracted system of
thought was
set appart from the "illussion" of
the other ways of seeing the
universe.
Hegel, is "victim of the
spirit of his times", which was the time of
progress and rational
thought.
It́s a nice discussion.
See
you.
Sebastian
On
4/16/07, Brian Morton <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
Actually the story of Medieval Logic is
pretty cool.
Dialectic was the Platonic form
of logic, and that of the Stoics
and
the
Skeptics and most other Greek and Hellenistics, but
Aristotle
and
Euclid, used very monological
styles even in the Ancient world.
Right
before the collapse of Rome, there was a form of heresy
called
Arianism, that became a big threat to
the authorities in Rome, and
Arians loved using
Aristotle, so Clement of Alexandria decided
to
make
it a policy to teach all Christian
priests just enough Aristotlean
logic
to be
able to oppose the Arians. When Rome fell, the Stoic
and
Skeptical arts of dialectic were mostly lost,
and what survived
was
Aristotelian logic, and
a fair bit of Plato (via Boethius).
The
medievals rebuilt a style of dialogue based argumentation
on
their
own, that had little to do with the
older dialectic forms (it was
probably partly
based on Roman legal practices). This medieval
"dialectic" was the 2nd part of the trivium, and
part of the
education
off all educated
medievals. Aquinas, and the other
philosophers
and
theologians, are intensely
dialectical in their style, but not at
all
in
the way the Stoics were. And it had
lots of
interesting
developments
(see http://www.pvspade.com/Logic/ for
lots of detailed
downloadables
on medieval
dialectics). Also the medieval faux-dialogues, are
often
edited versions of real dialogues
called quodlibets, that were
ancestors
to the
modern thesis defense, rather than hypothetical
dialogues.
The
Black Plague killed off this
stuff, and later humanists developed
Topical
logics, and then Term logics that were quite
different.
From
1350-1800's European logics
are not very dialectical.
Kant re-introduces
the notion of the dialectic, which for him means
"a
logic of appearances" rather than a logic
of how things actually
are
(related to
Aristotle's grudging use). Hegel, knows enough
history
of
logic to recognize the Kantian,
Medieval, and Platonic notions and
try
to
play with them all. He's drawing on Christian stuff
(both
mystical
types like Boehm, and
non-mystics like Ockham) and Deist
stuff
like
Kant, and older pagan stuff like
Socrates or Plato (but probably
not
folks
like Sextus or Chrysippus).
>>>
Sharon Stravaigne <[log in to unmask]>
4/14/2007
11:06
AM
>>>
In
a message dated 4/14/2007 7:59:12 A.M. Pacific Daylight
Time,
[log in to unmask]
writes:
Presumably the
Hegelian dialectic is part of that
classical
(pagan)
tradition
-??
i'm assuming that 'dialectic' was
not such
a strong part of
the christian
tradition??
bb
mogg
Both styles seem to have been in use in early Christian
times,
though
in one case it may have been an actual
conversation
recalled,
they
weren't much on fiction until
later.
The monograph style dominated later I think, but there is
something
I noticed which may be a kind of hybrid, or you could
view
it
as
left
over
from dialog style. This is where in a monograph,
the
speaker
says, "but if someone should say blah blah, then I would
answer
blah blah." This is almost like a dialogue but one that
is
obviously
hypothetical instead of presented as if real like in
a
play,
and
then
of
course you have the arguments between people writing
letters
and yelling at each other in
debates.
I haven't read all of it, I glanced at Aquinas years
ago,
and
I
recall
that in his presentation of all the arguments pro and con
on
every
conceivable matter, which was tedious, I suppose you
could
say
that he dialectized on
both sides.
Sharon
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