evolving ideas about eros

My friend Dr. Kevin Boileau, who leads EPIS -- the existential psychoanalytic institute -- invited me onto his weekly radio show to talk about eros -- the history of this word, how ideas have evolved over time about eros, raising questions about ancient conceptions of eros in Plato's Symposium and modern ideas about the self in Heidegger's Being and Time.  We talked about Homer's use of the term, Hesiod's use, and later writers such as Pherecydes, Empedocles and Sophocles -- as the significance of the term eros develops from an abstract noun for sexual desire, to the name of a God, to a name for a powerful natural force that binds the universe together, to something that human beings experience oppositely -- as the source of life and harmony and as an overwhelming irrational force that steals our reason.  

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/epis-radio/2013/01/26/historical-roots-of-eros-and-ancient-greece

Pherecydes

twelve basic philosophical archetypes

Dominic Marbaniang argued for several versions or types of theology.  Theology breaks down into basic stances -- for example, rationalism and empiricism.  I offered the idea that basic philosophical stances might be more primitive than the opposite basic stances Theism and Atheism.  If there are rationalist atheisms and theisms, and empiricist theisms and atheisms, then rationalism and empiricism underlie the phenomena of belief and doubt, as basic prototypes of seeing/reasoning -- perhaps because there are something like 'rationalist' and 'empiricist' temperaments. Some people approach the world by reason-seeking; some by fact-seeking; these temperaments -- if they are basic kinds of motivated search -- have a kind of psychological depth that precedes someone's decision about believing or doubting. They may be basic existential stances or ways of approaching the world.  

Rationalist theist: St. Anselm

Rationalist atheist: Critias

Empiricist theist: St. Francis

Empiricist atheist: Dawkins

I can make out several other sorts of temperament -- I think that I can isolate at least ten further basic archetypes.  The twelve basic types are:

metaphysics -- ontology -- going after the whole

skepticism -- a focus on ignorance

empiricism -- a focus on experience -- pragmatism, common sense philosophy, phenomenology

logic -- rationalism -- a focus on knowledge, on structure, on mathematics

moral philosophy -- the ethical perspective

synthesis -- holism -- assembling what is known -- the compendium, the encyclopedia

historicism -- a focus on time, development, evolution

rhetoric/linguistic philosophy -- a focus on language

biophilosophy -- a focus on the body -- neurology -- medicine; the healing arts -- therapeia

existentialism -- a focus on spirit, inwardness, subjectivity, felt immediacy 

psychology -- a focus on the self, personality, identity

social philosophy -- a focus on politics, intersubjectivity, community, interaction, dialogue, justice

Philosophy or radical critical inquiry breaks down into these basic types -- human beings have set out at least on these several paths, in lands far apart and wildly different epochs on the timeline, to conduct philosophy.  These are conversational strategies, or actor’s parts, or different sorts of people and sensibilities, and might be rehearsed in one’s own mind, or in a family, a neighborhood, a state or empire.  These are ways to talk – perspectives, languages, vocabularies – different practices of philosophy – these are basic philosophical orientations – these are questions from different questioners.  Socrates is telling us that we conduct this work in our own minds, by ourselves, in a silent conversation of the soul with itself; in which we take the part of saying and also answering back; expanding or reducing, taking a next step or returning back to the beginning.