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Clio |
| Do you remember the Greek myth about Clio? She was among the Circle Seven of the Muses, she the muse of History. She and her Circle are not to be confused with the Three Fates - The Daughters of Themis who is the Goddess of Necessity. All living things must eventually submit to these divine daughters of Zeus and Themis. Their names are: Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos.
Life is woven by Clotho weaves the cord of your life, Lachesis measures the cord thru-out your life, and Atropos by Lachesis cuts the thread of life with a clean snip! They laugh at our feeble attempts to cheat them because they always prevail.
Too often the FatesThey are confused with the Roman goddesses, the Morae.
The Fates are mentioned in Homer's Odyssey as the heavy Spinners. (The Odyssey, 07.097). But was Homer a real person and did he actually compose the Odyssey, or The Illiad for that matter?
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Sophia, sophos, sophisticated, sophistry, the sophists |
| Sophia is often personalized as the goddess of Wisdom. But the name here and the word as a general name rather than a perosnal one refers to that quality which itself serves as a normative idea that is diffeent from mere knowledge, or even understanding. The love of wisdom expressed by the Greeks in their word philosohia, in tme became a technical terms for a technical activity of the pursuit of theoretical knowledge thru analysis and synthesis that result in a body of written works usually, philosophy. Hopefully, occasionally, such a written work or oral presentation actually exhibits something of a genuine love of wisdom. The Sophists were an argumentive lot of brite guys who flocked from Asia Minor and other parts of Greece to teach, argue, strut, and earn a living by doing these things in Athens. Young men in Athens were expected by their parents to find tutors who would be paid a fee for their impartation of the skills of argumentive thawt, and hopefully some values like the greatest of them all in Greek culture: excellence! Finally, from among the Sophists there arose a truly great one, named Socrates. Among others, Herodotus and Plato, he was the object of admiration. But, while he met a heroic death that became the exemplary death which tawt the young how to conduct themselves in the crises of life, he never wrote anything, at least nothing has survived to us. Plato, his student, told us much about Socratics the One True Sophist in a set of dialogues in which we see the Socratic method at work. |
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Cliosophy |
| Cliosophy is historical wisdom. Unlike philosophy which tends more to pursue knowledge synchronically as system of thawt about everything, cliosophy is commited to a story and an account of something or some time-period in a narrative exhibiting time flow, however multifactorally. There are many kinds of such narratives, and such narrative may be embedded in larger works of systematic theoretically analytic and synthetic thawt. Where theory tends to be synchronic, cliosophical wisdom tends to be articulated diachronically. You have to chase it along its trajectory, it does not sit time-frosen like a slide of a cell, living or dead, that gives one focus on at a time on the living creature which is displayed to exhibit structure and the dynamics of the cells living constant internal operations. It's difficult, however, to find something utterly still and structure revealing in the desired manner of statics; it is equally difficult to follow all the changes at once in different ways and on different levels of anything with an internal dynamic - even in a rock as we know from the study of atoms and subatomic particles. Cliosophy seeks just such wisdom of persons, human societal groups, movements and institutions, happenings, and events - as well as anything changes over time in any kind of creature whatsoever. |
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Reformational Cliosophy |
| Reformational Cliosophy refers to a community of cliosophical reflection, narrative construction, discourse theory regarding cliosophy in general and the various kinds of cliosophical genres - including popular undocumented histories, thru to scientio-historiographic works. What's more Reformational cliosophy works in tandem with not only a budding reformational discourse theory, but also with the large body of works of Reformational philosophy. In this respect, scientio-historiographical works stand in contrast to and in mutually exploratory relationship with the scientio-philosophical works of Reformational philosophy.
Primary sources here are Herman Dooyeweerd's New Critique of Theoretical Thought (1953-1957); and D. H. Th. Vollenhoven's Isogogé Philosophae, Introduction to Philosophy, English translation, 2005.
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Initial Themes of the Reformational Cliosophy website |
| To begin our explorations toward a Reformational Cliosophy, these themes are offered as constituting the webpages of our site:
a.) The history of Dutch philosophy, which will be rendered "Dutch Philosophy history" in our navigation bar (for space reasons).
b.) The history of Christian philosophy in the United States of America (and its predecessor British colonies upon the entrance English-speaking settlers). In time, we hope to add a parallel treatment of philosophy in Canada, from the earliest francophone thinkers to the presentday; but, of coure, we must begin more modestly with at first only a sketchy approach to the neighbouring country. The title of this webpage will be rendered "History Chrstn Philsphy USA" (again, for reasons of space in the nav bar).
c.) History of America, using the popular meaning of the word "America" in the USA, as another term would not be an indigenous usage. And by "USA," again, we mean to encompass and to begin our explorations and bibliographical presentations with the predecessor British colonies that declared their independence only 150 years after their origins in the arrival of settlers from England, Britain, and Europe more widely until the Declaration of Independence in 1776. This focus will not be as specialist as the preceding devoted to Christian philosopy, and may include some attention to non-Christian philosophizing in the wider American culture. Nor will philosophy be the main focus, as many other aspects of the American historical experience will be approached as "co-factoral" (McIntire's term) to a balanced good overview of American history in the broad sense.
d.) The history of the foreign policy of the United States, rendered "US Foreign Policy," will tend to emphasize the founding of the Wilsonian view (with its roots in the Monroe Doctrine much earlier), the opponents to that approach which can be typified by the position of Sen Cabot Lodge (Republican) in his opposition to the innovations of the foreign policy of President Woodrow Wilson (Democrat). The approaches of John Foster Dulles and George Kennan will figure importantly for the post-World-War-Two era and the rise of the Cold War, the Vietnam War era, followed by the period thru the fall of the Berlin Wall and more largely the Iron Curtain. This allowed fantasies of universal peace to exfoliate one-sidedly in the USA, and the rise of a certain amnesia in foreign policy thinking and popular consciousness. Afterward, the attacks on the World Trade Center and, then, on September 11, 200?, on the Twin Towers, both events in New York City, initiated a dramatic turning of the tide to a foreign policy of engagement with world terrorism of the Islamofascist as conducted by the Al-Qaeda organization initially headed by Osama bin Laden of Saudi Arabia. What emerged, in the words of Ivo Daalders, was "the Bush Revolution in American Foreign Policy."
e.) Reformational Historians. This theme carries the risk of labelling and misrepresenting significant historians simply by grouping them under one rubric, when in fact they do not exist as a group as such, much less an organization or insittution. However, there are lines of influence, cross-referencing, debate, and most of all must-reading that mark almost all those cited in this list. I have tried to suggest a deeper root for whatever common element of interest that urges me to embrace the entirety of these figures, and that I trace to D'Aubigne and Groen van Prinsterer. But is presentday thinkers in search of historical wisdom that I am concerned to inscribe here, and therefore to find such common roots as there may be in historians of earlier times.
f.) The philosophy of history. This theme will orient itself to the consequent problem-historical method (CPHM) for study of the Western philosophical tradtion, the method developed by Prof D. H. Th. Vollenhoven and taken up by a number of keen philosophers, history scholars, and historiographers in the more exact sense of writers of scientio-historiographical studies.
Other themes will be introduced when it proves possible to develop additional webpages for the site. But there is more than enuff to do already with the themes mentioned above. - Cliostory |
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