To accompany Nelson Mandela I would add the insights recorded by Jim Stockdale and Viktor Frankl who wrote, in "Man's Search for Meaning," about his experiences in Hitler's concentration camps:
"We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us."
These men did not just "read" the wisdom of the Stoics, they lived it. This visceral knowledge is, in part, how I think about the Gnostic's understanding of knowledge. Something revealed by direct experience and not just book learning. Much in the same way the Greco-Roman use of "philosophy" was much more practical and applied and not relegated to the hallowed and hollow halls of academia.
To accompany Nelson Mandela I would add the insights recorded by Jim Stockdale and Viktor Frankl who wrote, in "Man's Search for Meaning," about his experiences in Hitler's concentration camps:
"We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us."
These men did not just "read" the wisdom of the Stoics, they lived it. This visceral knowledge is, in part, how I think about the Gnostic's understanding of knowledge. Something revealed by direct experience and not just book learning. Much in the same way the Greco-Roman use of "philosophy" was much more practical and applied and not relegated to the hallowed and hollow halls of academia.
Still blinded out. (This platform has been surprisingly glitchy for me, which is why I never completed my site here.)
¿Why can't I see the comments for Gnosis... after posting one? Where'd they go?