Wolfgang Smith and John Vervaeke: The Perpetual Promise & Inexhaustibleness of Contact with Reality

John Vervaeke, Wolfgang Smith and Richard Smith begin with a discussion of relativism and what we can do about its negative aspects. Then begins a wide ranging discussion of the tripartite macrocosm and the tripartite microcosm and the overlap between John's work and Wolfgang's work.

Many book recommendations included in the timestamps. Fuller bios of Dr. John Vervaeke, Dr. Wolfgang Smith and Dr. Richard Smith in previous conversation: https://youtu.be/5G9gk49VhKM

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

03:35 JV Discussion of Cultural Relativism; the limits of cultural frameworks

05:30 JV Plato is well aware of he many aspects of any object, even the visual aspect A through line is that which binds the aspects together. The Platonic framework All organisms are varied - a universal process has produced the variation

08:30 WS Relativism is intimately connected with the Cartesian bifurcationism (my res cogitates is different than yours). In today’s world, we are trained to be disrespectful

11:20 JV Relativism exacerbated by Des Cartes. Lack of respect. Elevation of subjectivity to be half of ontology has been problematic Clark’s Explorations of Metaphysics. Kant never gave an argument for the possibility of understanding other human beings. Wittgenstein: There is ‘no private language’. If there were a private language, you couldn’t be corrected.

15:45 WS Respect is a sine qua non for all else. Today, we create skeptics, critics, always negative to the consensus. To find Truth, one needs to start with sane human attitudes.

21:15 JV Nietszche, Freud, Marx have given us the hermeneutics of suspicion. Palo, Merleau Ponti, J. J. Gibson are giving us a hermeneutics of disclosure. Beauty as disclosing reality. What is needed is this kind of dialogic format focused on the hermeneutics of beauty. An ability to follow the through line.

27:00 Many truths are only disclosed to us when we are willing to go through a transformative process. “Not just erudite, but wise.” Wolfgang Smith

30:15 WS You need to have a certain access to the truth before you get more truth. Contemporary teaches to doubt and question everything, so young people are deprived of truth.

33:00 JV That which is most real has intelligible coherence. And the opposite of that, held in tension to the first, is that the real is simultaneously what surprises, shocks, startles us. We need to live a stance as finite transcendents. Reality discloses itself in our finitude. Myths of heroism so we don’t despair of our finitude v. Myths of hubris so that we are constantly aware of our mortality.

38:11 WS The Platonic program - Platonists regarded the intermediary realm to be inherently mathematical (geometry) Sidereal/ planetary / terrestrial Seeing with the eye of the intellect

51:00 JV Difference between Platonism and Neo-Platonism (a continuity between Aristotle and Plato Tripartite in John’s understanding: Nous: The intelligible is that which is accessible only through the nous. Sensible: Corresponds to the corporeal Imaginal: Rituals link the intellect (the nous) and the sensible.

57:15 JV Realizing the through line - theory All the appearances have a throughline that points to something beyond.

1:00:30 JV This all has to translate into me becoming wiser

1:00:59 Geometry, the imaginal, the intermediary, the Pythagoreans, Proclus, theurgia, liturgy. Yogic transition of the imaginal and geometric traditions. Intermediary includes both the intellect and the imaginal

Sacred geometry Truth and Reality Reverence and Virtue

Thomas Taylor’s Commentary on the Timaeus

Eric Perl’s Theophany: the Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius

Thomas Cheetham’s All the World is an Icon