In the so-called “erotic dialogues”, especially the Symposium and the Phaedrus, Plato explained why erotic desire can play an epistemic function, establishing a strong connection between erotic desire and beauty, “the most clearly visible and the most loved” among the Ideas. Taking the erotic dialogues as a background, in this paper I elucidate Plato’s explanation in another context, the one of the Phaedo, for discussing the epistemic function of erotic desire in relation to the deficiency argument and the affinity argument. (...) My claim is that the erotic desire of the philosopher is activated by the recognition of traces of the Ideas as something that the material world lacks and that, nevertheless, his soul is familiar with. This desire for the Ideas triggers the process of recollection, and thus erotic desire acquires a decisive role in the acquisition of knowledge in the Phaedo. In the final section of the paper, I highlight the contemporary relevance of Plato’s epistemology of erotic desire. (shrink)

Realism has been a central object of attention among analytical philosophers for some decades. Starting from analytical philosophy, the return of realism has spread into other contemporary philosophical traditions and given birth to new trends in current discussions, as for example in the debates about “new realism.” Discussions about realism focused on linguistic meaning, epistemology, metaphysics, theory of action and ethics. The implications for politics of discussion about realism in action theory and in ethics, however, are not much discussed.

In 1923 Rudolf Otto gathered a number of appendices in Das Heilige (1917) in one of which he connected Zen Buddhism and the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart. The common denominator was life, as it lives without reason, lives because it lives, likewise the righteous man works for the sake of working and only then is genuinely free. When, in 1965 Shizuteru Ueda published his doctoral dissertation on Eckhart, he included a comparison with Zen returning to that topic. In light of (...) the dichotomy actioncontemplation in the Western tradition, we examine the similarities and differences between Eckhart and Zen pointed out by Ueda in this regard and its meaning for contemporary thought. In both cases the projection beyond God results in a new way of being and acting in the world : who has experienced this emptiness does not ask why, does not seek anymore, and therefore has found. This. (shrink)