While Plato’s Symposium begins with men of diverse profession and experience mutually determining that Love is the most essential thing or greatest good…our new symposium will assume only that the myriad things that present themselves to our mind as being many, are essentially one thing. Call it Love, Nature, God, Cosmic Egg, primordial vibration/song/word/idea—the only assumption here will be the apriori assumption or hypothesis that the multiplicity of things we perceive as being many are ultimately unified in some way. This does not imply a mere collapsing of the many into the one in some hierarchical, linear fashion, only that even if the one thing is really two—or more—things or merely the relationship between something and nothing, those two things must exist in some dynamic, self-renewing, necessarily heterogeneous way. We will also be assuming—with Kautilya Chanakya—that to the knower of the means, the impossible becomes possible. In other words, whatever the one thing is, it ‘exists’ and as such “must exist in some way,” a way that is ultimately knowable in “some possible physics, [philosophy, narrative, or experience]” (Galen Strawson).
Unlike Plato’s Symposium, we will all be present in real time (more or less), however… as with the Symposium, we will be inviting great minds of the past to join our discussion to ensure the most comprehensive appraisal of our subject as possible. These older—even ancient—voices tend to be void of modern bias. I find it easier to spot and negotiate the false paradigms they were influenced by than those of our own day. As such their voices are not only interesting and valuable but I would argue their findings are essential to our dialogue—no matter how unfashionable or passé their conclusions may seem within the context of our present means and methods of deriving truth.
I invite each of you to express in fairly lay terms, the way(s) in which you have attempted to reconcile the breach between the universal and distinct aspects of nature and the human experience for yourselves. By the way, theoretical and concrete examples are both welcome here. Also, I will not be posting a lot on here but rather giving time for many opinions to surface and be discussed. I am not a “blogger” per se, this is just an experiment I wanted to try. Thanks for your interest and support.
So, what are possible candidates for the one and what is its relationship to the many in your opinion?
anewsymposium 