The thesis is that the Apollonian-Dionysian dialectic partially illuminates the dialectical relationship between the Will to Power and the Eternal Recurrence. The Apollonian-Dionysian synthesis restores the Will to Power, despite the necessities of the Eternal Recurrence, not because anything changes but because nothing can. One must succumb to the ecstasy of action, defying the paralysis of understanding while acknowledging its eternal power.

In this paper I argue that, for Nietzsche, the will to power is a kind of élan vital, i.e., vital impulse, force or drive. In living creatures, it is a drive to express their natures. In human beings, it is complex and must be developed in stages. The initial stages include becoming independent and striving for freedom of spirit and expression. Of the few that achieve the last stage, some will become the Übermensch or superior persons who will achieve great creative acts and in so doing enhance the capabilities of all humans. Nietzsche spoke as if he were one of the free spirits, but implicit in his writings is the idea that he is an exemplar of the Übermensch.

The paper defines units of cognition from data, through; information, concept, knowledge, and to wisdom, applying the Semantic Ladder. This concept is later used in describing different levels of computer information systems and defining a process of decision-making. Finally, the Semantic Ladder is applied in understanding art, where certain compositions reflect different units of cognition, including the simplest and most complex ones. This study implies that wisdom as the ultimate unit of cognition is the result of hierarchical processing of data, information, concept, and knowledge. What does it mean for civilization? The more we know, the more we want; and we may be in more trouble! Can we overcome knowledge that we created and become wiser?

This paper explores the possibility of finding wisdom in nature. For a compassionate relationship with the natural world to make sense, the author proposes nothing less than a paradigm change within science. Science must adopt the view that intelligence is not only reserved for living systems but that a minimal kind of consciousness is present at all levels, especially at the level of quanta. This is called quantum animism. Utilizing insights from system theory, cybernetics, and theory of complexity the author further suggests that the process of Collective Orchestration explains how natural systems advance to higher complexity. Thus Collective Orchestration could close the gap between Micro and Macro evolution. In the growing debate about intelligent design versus evolution Collective Orchestration could be the missing link that explains evolution as an ongoing process of self organization at all levels, eliminating the need for intelligent design.

The thesis of this paper is, first, that ecological thinking—which takes its point of departure from specifically located, multifaceted analyses of knowledge production and circulation in diverse demographic and geographic locations—can generate more responsible knowings than the reductivism of the positivist post-Enlightenment legacy allows; and second, that ecological thinking can spark a revolution comparable to Kant’s Copernican revolution, which recentered western thought by moving “man” to the center of the philosophical-conceptual universe. Kantian philosophy was parochial in the conception of “man” on which it turned: a recognition central to feminist, Marxist, post-colonial and critical race theory. It promoted a picture of a physical and human world centered on and subservient to a small class and race of men who were uniformly capable of achieving a narrowly-conceived standard of reason, citizenship, and morality. As humanism vied with theism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so ecological thinking vies with capitalism at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Here I outline its promise.

In this essay I wish to discuss the notions of utopia, especially the notion of epistemological utopia as Leszek Kołakowski described it in one of his paper. Epistemological utopia is not tantamount to the conception of perfect and unalterable knowledge. On the contrary, in its realm there is also a place for scepticism, because scepticism is a kind of epistemological utopia but à rebours. Epistemological fundamentalism and scepticism are indeed two opposite attitudes but they finally belong to each other. Nevertheless, no one from these attitudes satisfy our epistemological theory. Bertrand Russell described similar situation in his short essay titled On optimism: we can accept at most together pessimist and optimist, never only one of them. Therefore that situation provides to the necessity of overcoming theoretical field of these two, foundational and sceptical, conceptions. In this article I use Wittgenstein’s ideas to search for a ‘new’ epistemological attitude.

After acknowledging that the crisis of the present-day-world is in its very essence the crisis of reason, I consider both the logical notion of reason and an odyssey which reason accomplished within the spread of the modern and postmodern Western history. Doing that, I regard reason not as a subjective human power, being a conventional and formal notion which means nothing if it would not be taken in action of great groups of people and in connection with material contents from which the most important are values or sets of values. I indicate two main kinds of hitherto existing rationality as paradigms of acting reason: (1) metaphysical rationality and (2) instrumental rationality. I put on a thesis that, at all contemporary conditionings: social, cultural, political, also philosophical and others, the two paradigms of rationality have exhausted nowadays their creative possibilities. It has come a time which inclines for looking for another kind of rationality better corresponding to the existing, at present, challenges that would fit better to the state of the contemporary philosophical awareness. The instrumental rationality seems to be ambiguous in consequences and, additionally, has an inclination to turn into irrationality. On the other hand, the traditional metaphysical rationality lost its power of being effective because of historical evolution of the philosophy itself. The 20th century has been by many currents of contemporary philosophy, and by many philosophers, announced as post-metaphysical or even antimetaphysical. I am of an opinion that, taking into account many essential threats of further existence of humankind as well as of physical world, the problem of the socalled metaphysics of foundations has lost its importance. All efforts of philosophers, and all reasoning and acting people, should be directed towards shaping a new kind of rationality as a new paradigm which could function within all contemporary existing civilizations. My proposal is to label this new kind of rationality with the term dialogical rationality. And I think that this rationality could be something that would unite peoples, nations, regions, civilizations, cultures, religions, philosophical directions etc., beyond all hitherto existing differences and controversies, and in the name of the most important present values as well as for diminishing, if not annihilating, great threats. The concept of dialogical rationality is discussed on the basis of views belonging to the greatest achievements of contemporary philosophy like philosophy of dialogue, views of Jaspers, Popper, Habermas, representatives of postmodernism, and others.

The fundamental liberal argument supporting the concept of “individualism” is that all individuals possess the same rights and liberties which define each citizen as an individual. Yet each individual somehow remains a person who defines her/himself as separate and distinct from all others and so who should never be considered to be a part of a concretely real group. Such a presupposition entails others. Liberalism presupposes naturalism, that human nature is fixed and knowable, as well as idealism, the belief that rational persuasion and argument are assumed to be the engines of change, and moralism, the idea that nature and reason must also provide some clues for acting. Ultimately, liberalism also implies volunteerism, the idea that social life is comprised of autonomous,intentional, and self-will actions that follow from the rules for right and wrong, which are themselves derived from reason, whose efficacy is natural. This essay argues that when women and other minorities examine the reasonable and rational public political culture, they may find that these very social structures, which are the ones they are most likely to value are also the site of their greatest oppression.

Feminist standpoint epistemology suggests that women (or feminists) are cognitively privileged, since gender-specific forms of oppression produce insights systematically denied to men. Yet if many forms of oppression exist, what happens when they overlap? Some reject such theories as irredeemably essentialist, triumphalist, and relativist, but I argue that their original versions in Hegel and Lukács as supplemented by Sabina Lovibond generate both the strongest arguments for standpoint theories and a way through their deepest difficulties.

It is obvious that scientific knowledge continues its progress in spite of the limitations placed on it by Kuhn’s paradigm theory, and as we have seen, Kuhn admits this progress and seeks to explain it. Scientific discoveries occur almost weekly as we acquire greater and greater knowledge of the world, society, and ourselves. Yet society does not progress; it stagnates and sometimes regresses. Why is it that the vast knowledge we have accumulated is not extended to the improvement of human societies? Why has this humanistic project of the Enlightenment been abandoned?

One implication of Godel’s Proof is that, as Barry Barnes has observed, “For people to operate...rationally they need to have internalized some non-rational commitment to rationality”. In which case “The customary Enlightenment formula, according to which the process of demagification of the world leads necessarily from mythos to logos, seems . . .” Gadamer suggests, “. . . to be a modern prejudice”, or myth. Yet some myths are more useful than others, and therefore it may be on pragmatic grounds that, following Nietzsche’s characterization of “. . . logic and the categories of reason as means to . . . useful falsification . . .” we may wish to resist the abandonment of reason that many take to be the corollary of its deconstruction.

The suggestion of this paper is that we need again widely to practice and teach “the science of the soul” (rigorous metaphorical action) in order to produce the renaissance required to keep civilization going. A metaphor is not the saying of one thing while meaning another. In fact, metaphor is not limited to speech and writing. The understanding offered here is that, properly understood and employed, metaphor is a powerful and indispensable precision tool for radical improvement in thought. It is a prime guide and cause effecting leaps of mind from one axiomatic train of thought or mind set to a better, higher, and seemingly incommensurable one. It is at once a tool for teaching those insights which founded the civilization and a training regimen for strengthening rational creativity to solve new problems.