Delphic Podcast by Michael R D James

Rhetoric and Psychology lost their characters at the end of the 1800's and this was due to a loss of commitment to ancient institutions such as the Church and a waning of commitment to the Rationality of the Ancient Greek and Enlightenment Philosophy of Kant. Herder claims that Shakespeare soul  is aging and withering. The Platonic dialogues relating to the trial and last days of Socrates hav...

The Symbolism of confessional language is to be compared with the symbolism of many of Shakespeares soliloquys where transcendental intentions reach back to the origin of all things and forward to a future end or telos of things. Freuds religious views are more iconoclastic than Kants views which seeks to retore a role for religion within the bounds of Reason. There is an apparent conflict between...

 T S Eliot did not believe Shakespeares work to be Philosophical because of his view that Religion and Philosophy shared an intimate relation which the Ancient Greeks did not believe was the case. The Ancient Greek Gods praised what is just more than what was holy and the trinity of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were in agreement. Our Western Christian Religion views mans soul as flawed with sin,...

The Role of History in Shakespeare has not been examined sufficiently, perhaps because of the ambiguity of various remarks Aristotle made in his work on the "Poetics". Weil points out that History like many other  disciplines in various categories of the sciences has a hylomorphic Structure. We argue that there are a number of arguments which support reclassifying many of Shakespeares pl...

Aesthetic ideas are used by Shakespeare to "show" the reach of the powers of the imagination, understanding and Reason. We are taken on a hypnotic cosmopolitan journey into the worlds of Emperors, Kings, Queens, Princes, soldiers, lawyers, merchants, university students, sailors tyrants and murderers in familiar and exotic places of the world. Hamlet is merely an indecisive youthful univ...

Coplot Review of "The Metaphysics of Psuché and Psychoanalysis: An Aristotelian and Kantian Critique" by Michael R D James http://michaelrdjames.org Delphic Podcast

Opera AI Review of  "The Metaphysics and Logos of Psuché and Psychoanalysis: An Aristotelian and Kantian Critique" by Michael R D James http://michaelrdjames.org Delphic Podcast

Summary of the Introduction to "Shakespeares Philosophical Theatre" published by Austin Macaulay in May 2026 http://michaelrdjames.org Delphic Podcast

Noos is the part of mind which is a first principle of all our mental and psychological powers and which Aristotle believed was a divine part of the human mind which was confined to thinking about something. Divine thinking on the other hand was a form of thinking about thinking which it was impossible for us to comprehend. The Storm of the collision of Indian, Eastern and European Cultures and my...

Review based on an Introductory essay at the beginning of the work http://michaelrdjames.org Delphic Podcast

"Dust in the air suspended marks the place where a story ended"( T S Eliot Four Quartets). The Astronauts walked on the dust of the moon after the moon was  despiritualised  and the dust was not  the dust of lost souls but remnants of physical processes in the long distant past. Frobenius sees the human race to be maturing toward a telos in which the Holy Ghost no longer needs institutio...

Shakespeare is a Philosophical Poet because his works do not just touch on Philosophical themes but rather embodies the ideas of Aristotelian  and Kantian Aesthetics, Ethics, and Philosophical Psychology. His poetic intuitions are clearly set in a Philosophical framework http://michaelrdjames.org Delphic Podcast

Schizophrenia  takes many forms and all forms are designated by psychiatric medicine as psychotic conditions. Paranoid Schizophrenia is concerned with the defence mechanisms of splitting, projection and denial (that one is ill, for example) Campbell refers to shamanic crises in this context and likens their experience unto the hero embarking on a long and dangerous Odyssey  into the unknown. Jungs...

War and Peace Mythologies are related to Philosophy in various complex ways but insofar as Ancient Greece originated with Socratic reflections on the Justice and its relation to the Holy, the Mythologies of Peace are more closely related to Ancient Greek than the Mythologies of War. Zarathurianism and its  light/dark, truth/illusion, life-death oppositions appears Heraclitean. http://michaelrdjame...

The Romantic idea of Hell and Satan began with the troubadours  celebration of Amor as the good-in-itself worth the most terrible of consequences. The Kantian Hidden Plan  might be proof of Gods love for us in spite of humanity failing the test of our love for him. William Blake: Hell is not that bad and Amor may be worth paying the price of eternal damnation. http://michaelrdjames.org Delphic Pod...

The power of Light  may be constituted of many light bulbs but such a power transcends these material empirical things which of course in a sense explain the origin of the light. Campbells mythological explanations of Consciousness do not necessarily contradict the metaphysical accounts of Aristotle and Kant which leave the possibility of a mythology within the bounds of reason open. The Philosoph...

Oriental  Art is differently structured to Western Occidental Art whose condition features a self- sufficient independent object intentionally created for an aesthetic purpose which may have  a moral  message. The Art of Yoga is an instinctively grounded activity in which it is the imagination that plays the leading role in the activity. In contrast to Western Art whose focus is on the external wo...

Eastern Religions embrace a time span of millions of years whilst  our Western Bible spans thousands of years and contains a scientifically proven inadequate account of the beginning of our world. Our symbols have lost their "affect value", Campbell claims. Our Western Humanism however would dismiss both irrational elements of our own religion as well as in Oriental religions, claiming t...

Eastern Mythologies and Religions extend over enormous spans of time and a human life is but a blink of an eye in such a context. Campbell claims that the Western focus on individual freedom and responsibility is a repugnant idea to the Eastern mind. Hindu women immolating themselves because of rigidly defined roles allocated to them by a closed society for the Western mind is equally repugnant an...

The Decline of the West is the theme for this essay and Campbell refers to a loss of form which was present in Athens but not in the larger social entities such as Rome, New York, London, and Paris. Freuds myth of the "Band of Brothers" is part of his conjectural history of the evolution of the civilising process and points to the taboo/law of equality. 1914 is the year Campbell believes...

The discipline of Psychology is "trans-scientific" which might account for the "conceptual confusion" in the subject that Wittgenstein pointed to. In 1870 research in accordance with the definition "The Science of Consciousness" followed a reductionist program that truncated the broader concerns of Psychology. Sensations, feelings and behaviour replaced wider concerns...

Science has a metaphysical (Philosophical) foundation which Campbell fails to recognise, preferring to focus instead of certain forms of technology not connected to the weapons of mass destruction the scientists have produced to solve essentially political problems. Freuds work and the History of Philosophy and Psychology are also marginalised by Campbells account  http://michaelrdjames.org Delphi...

Deciding to forget a traumatic experience involving violence such as the establishment of Athens might be a kind of sublimation of ones own anger at oneself. Such an act may have a cathartic aspect and as such be the last good act of a chain of evil consequences. The Historian, however, has a duty  to remember that violence and be as accurate as they can be about the relevant events and their caus...

Freudian accounts of trauma and the compulsion to repeat until the trauma is "understood" and subjected to a process of catharsis are intimately connected to the themes of memory and forgetting. The Brain is obviously part of the material cause of the phenomena of remembering and forgetting but  it is more the organisational structure of the brain more than particular areas that is the m...

The work of remembering and the work of expectation are civilisation building and culture enhancing aspects of our "Being-in-the-world": the being in the world of the human psuché. The Bible, many philosophers argue including Spinoza, Kant and Wittgenstein, does contain a work of remembering but this might not be as complete as the more eschatological aspect of the work of expectation we...