The castle of the fisherman king

The image of Plato’s cave is given a new shape in the Middle Ages (12th century) in the Parsival Saga. There is told about a castle, ‘unreachable for our steps’. There are two famous versions of this saga, a German one by Wolfram von Eschenbach, and the older French version by Chrestien de Troyes. The […]

Plato’s allegory of the cave, Republic, book VII

A dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon ‘And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: –Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have […]

The objective I

When we perceive ourselves precisely, we will find that we bear an objective source in ourselves. It is not the ego that thinks, feels, does whatever comes to it, that is filled with opinions and judgments, with antipathies and sympathies and is apt to act from stone hard feelings. It is not the ego that […]

How subjective is the I?

When one contemplates on the phenomenon of the human “I”, immediately the question arises who should examine that “I” An examination can only be scientific, when it has an objective character. The “I” though is the subject itself, so it actually would not be possible to examine it – with exception of an examination in […]

Process and insight

On a seminar last Saturday in Antwerp I spoke about the ‘thinking’ of the computer compared to the human thinking. To be able to do so of course one has to study this kind of computer thinking deeply. It is a very interesting and instructive theme. Everyone – also me myself – works with the […]

I am and DNA is

While reflecting on the DNA-research it came to me that there is a similarity in the vagueness of the knowledge about the own ‘I’ and the knowledge about the own DNA – but also a big difference. We can feel very clearly that we are ‘I’ – but the more we look at the own […]

The ‘I’ and the DNA

Whenever one becomes aware that one is, and so can say: I am!, one can feel one’s own ‘I’ as a kind of summary of all his qualities – positive and negative -, fortune, opinions, images, judgements, temperament, everything that one has seen and heard in life, the paths one has gone, the plans  for […]

The significance of the ‘I’

When we look at the classic (dead) languages like Greek and Latin, the ‘I‘ still is in the verb, it is not a separate word. In the conjugations of the verbs we can find about whom is spoken. We still find this in the roman languages like Spanish – a living language. In French, German, […]

The ‘I’ and the egoism

After having experienced a number of great views on the human being, I turn to a reflection about th ‘I’. Maybe it’s the most spoken word in our culture. One can find many theories in philosophy, psychology and psychiatry about the question: What is the ‘I’? Is it something that as the highest self-consciousness is […]

Adam Kadmon

In the blogtexts that I wrote from may 2014 on, I first try to give my view on the question: What is a human being. There is the view of a primordial man who was perfect already, who stands at the beginning of the evolution of mankind. We find this view throughout the different religions. […]