Dostoevsky asserted more than once that understanding is achieved primarily through the heart, rather than the rational mind, and the dry and dispassionate intellectualism (in his view) of the West was a particular object of his contempt, seeing it as a dilution of our humanity.
(There are in this view echoes of Kepler, who believed that the Earth itself is an ensouled body, and of myriad native cosmogonies that regard other animals as sources of more-than-human wisdom and emissaries of the numinous.)
Gabriel Rosenstock gives a poetic response to twelve visionary paintings by the ‘myriad-minded’ writer and polymath, while Jane Clark and Peter Huitson give an overview of his life, work and legacy.
Love
I suddenly felt a powerful rush of energy emerge from my chest like nothing I had ever experienced before and could not even imagine possible.
Brilliant article introducing how to contextualize our human experience --- from First Great Decentering: Copernicus, to the Second Great Decentering: Darwin, to the Third Great Decentering "supplanting the figure of the human as the measure and master of all things".
In an era of planetary crisis and a time when universities are increasingly under attack, an underlying question that has gradually moved to the center of attention is this: what is the role of universities in society, and what should their role be going forward?