This selection of recent (2010-2011 ce) essays of mine – available as a pdf document from the link below – provides a reasonable overview of my weltanschauung (deriving from my pathei-mathos of some forty years) and which weltanschauung I have termed both The Numinous Way and The Philosophy of The Numen, given that, perhaps somewhat pedantically, I use the term philosophy to refer not to some modern academic subject or subjects but rather to the learning and knowledge of and acquired by a philosopher, where a philosopher, as the etymology of the word suggests, is someone who is a friend of – whose companion is, who seeks to find, to acquire, to follow – σοφόν. Thus in this sense, a philosopher is someone seeking to acquire both a certain skill and a particular knowledge, and a skill and a knowledge acquired through both learning and from practical experience, from life; a dual sense evident from the meaning and usage of σοφός.
The particular knowledge – as Cicero mentioned in De Officiis (Liber Secundus, 5) – is of Being and beings (rerum divinarum et humanarum) and their genesis; and the certain skill is σωφρονεῖν - of having a reasoned, a balanced, a prudent, a wise, personal judgement and thence a balanced, a wise, personal character; a skill acquired, quite often, from pathei-mathos.
In many of the essays included here, as elsewhere, I have sometimes used terms from Ancient Greek because such terms, in my view, are informative and comparative, with there thus being a link between the philosophy of The Numen and the weltanschauung of early Hellenic culture, embodied in and manifest as this was by the works of Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Heraclitus, Sappho, and many others.
Thus, it would be fair to assume that the ethos of my weltanschauung is both indebted to and a development of the ethos of that Hellenic culture; an indebtedness obvious in the centrality, in the Numinous Way, of personal honour and notions such as δίκη, and a development manifest in notions such as empathy.
David Myatt
January 2012 ce
JD 2455944.913
Contents
^Preface
^In Pursuit of Wisdom
^The Principle of Δίκα
^A Brief Numinous View of Religion, Politics, and The State
^War and Violence in the Philosophy of The Numinous Way
^Authority and Legitimacy in the Philosophy of The Numinous Way
^Notes Concerning Causality, Ethics, and Acausal Knowing
^Honour, Empathy, and Compassion
^Toward Understanding The Acausal
Attic Vase c. 480 BCE, depicting Athena (Antikensammlungen, Munich, Germany)
