‘He gave lectures like this to his companions as he vigorously trained them in their practice of philosophy: virtue, he said, is not just theoretical knowledge, it is also practical, like both medical and musical. The doctor and the musician must each not only learn the principles of his own skill but be trained to […]

Image Source: Flickr – Dimitris Kamaras Translation from the French: Nicolas Lecerf ‘Even though many texts allude to it, there is no systematic treatise codifying, in an exhaustive manner, a theory and a technic (askesis) of the philosophical exercise. One can guess that these practices were part before everything else of an oral teaching and […]

Dyas Chimica Tripartita-1625 * * * “To understand symbols and symbolic rituals, demands the interpreter to possess five qualities or conditions, without them the symbols will be dead for him and him a dead for them. * The first one is sympathy, not the first one according to time, but the first one according to […]

  To Michael Smyth, In Memoriam  * This is a re-post of Madame Staveley’s wonderful pamphlet, originally published on March 8, 2013 in our former blog. Its subject may be of interest and use for the trying times we are now living. * People often speak of the difficulties they have in formulating their aims. […]

‘The School of Athens’ by Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino. * Written by Nicolas LecerfAfterwords by Nalan Özkan Lecerf It is a cultural and thus political answer: Our society is nurturing specialists and not polymaths, as they don’t fit in the social design devoted to industry and production that has been our framework for centuries. All […]