Rein Undusk - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Rein Undusk
Keel ja kirjandus, Feb 1, 2017
Acta Baltica Historiae et Philosophiae Scientiarum Vol. 3, No. 2 (Autumn) , 2015
The "Renaissance concept of space" harbors surely some definite bonuses for anybody embarking on ... more The "Renaissance concept of space" harbors surely some definite bonuses for anybody embarking on a study of the inventive role that philosophy has had, in its happiest moments of life, for human cognition. First, the new suppositions related to physical space emerge in the renaissance as derivative from the theological-philosophical assumptions of the era: what renaissance space is can be enunciated quite convincingly on the basis of the intellectual collisions that the era was allotted to deal with. thus, as a re-generator of classical culture, the renaissance had to a degree dug up the finite substructure of ancient thinking; however, as an inheritor of the Middle Ages, it had been requested to square finitism with transcendency. Second, much of what we can today fit under Renaissance space is in fact delivered to us in the artistic form of painting, which means that, in addition to the challenge set by philosophy to the spatial knowledge of the era, there was postulated as well a mediatory agency of art in the realization and conveyance of this new knowledge. Thus we can suppose that the solution offered by Renaissance art to the problem of space on its fictional plane comprised the germ of some modern knowledge about space in reality.
Trames Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2012
The infinite, understood as transcendency, stood in the background of most medieval thinking. Emb... more The infinite, understood as transcendency, stood in the background of most medieval thinking. Embraced in the early Middle Ages by the concept of universal natural symbolism, which organized the reading of the syntax of natura, the infinite posed new epistemic problems for medieval thinking after the re-emergence of Aristotle's natural philosophy, with some of its strongly finitist strings, in 12th century Europe. In fact, the collision of scholastic natural philosophy with supernatural theology, included judiciously in the structure of the medieval university, proved highly fruitful from the perspective of the development of knowledge as such. The effective, as regards the preparation of via moderna, entanglement of Franciscan Platonism and Aristotelianism in the philosophies of John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham is testimony to it. The present article undertakes the task to offer some insights into the way infinity was accommodated in medieval Christian thinking, especially from the point of view of concept formation in culture, and of the interrelations between different cognitive demands of the human mind.
Trames. Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2014
The Renaissance can surely be called a great amalgam of diverse historical, cultural and philosop... more The Renaissance can surely be called a great amalgam of diverse historical, cultural and philosophical impulses. Its outwardly impressive traits hide a pedigree of a confused and enigmatic nature that had combined the bulk of Christian, ancient and medieval motifs in their mutual interaction. The marks of the Renaissance are therefore ambiguous, allowing for explanations from differing or even contradictory positions. Focusing on German Dominican thinking of the later medieval period, the present article argues how some characteristics of the Renaissance can be deduced from the background of Albert the Great, Dietrich of Freiberg, and Meister Eckhart, and how they provided material for the symbiotic work in the person of Nicholas of Cusa.
kirj.ee
As part of an expected further investigation into the role of infinity in stimulating contacts am... more As part of an expected further investigation into the role of infinity in stimulating contacts among religion, knowledge, and art in Western culture, the article focuses on the change in the attitude to infinity occurring in Neoplatonism and early Christianity. The overcoming of the so-called disgust with infinity, characterizing the ancient thought, must be linked largely to two factors. First, Christian monotheism provided the means for channelling the monistic (and theological) undercurrent of ancient thought, which had secretly let it drift (in Platonism) towards the positive concept of ápeiron, while retaining simultaneously a wish to offer a rational and dialectically founded explication for the world. The fitting together of these divergent ends-theological and rational-was rendered possible by a second factor, by the specifically Christian, i.e. Trinitarian, concept of God. Assisted by the seminal studies of Pierre Hadot, the present article tries to elucidate the conceptual developments and mutations underlying the emergence of the new understanding of infinity in Christian culture.
Books by Rein Undusk
oxymora 7, 2022
The rhetoric of culture claims that culture makes sense as a trip from aesthetics to rationality ... more The rhetoric of culture claims that culture makes sense as a trip from aesthetics to rationality to theology. The three legs, obtained through cross sectioning of the route that is conic in its form, determine the three separately homogenous spaces of culture. The question posing to the itinerant is how to traverse the enforced cutting between the sections (on the way from aesthetics to rationality and onward) without losing one’s memory and the merits once gained. How to achieve the personality of knowledge as a scientist? How to integrate rationality with the vectors from the aesthetical and theological sides? What to do with volition that is disposed to act without antecedents, that is, incidentally? The thesis of the present book is that the integrative approach to culture is achievable out of rhetorical stance on it and can be explicated on the basis of distribution of infinity in culture.
Keel ja kirjandus, Feb 1, 2017
Acta Baltica Historiae et Philosophiae Scientiarum Vol. 3, No. 2 (Autumn) , 2015
The "Renaissance concept of space" harbors surely some definite bonuses for anybody embarking on ... more The "Renaissance concept of space" harbors surely some definite bonuses for anybody embarking on a study of the inventive role that philosophy has had, in its happiest moments of life, for human cognition. First, the new suppositions related to physical space emerge in the renaissance as derivative from the theological-philosophical assumptions of the era: what renaissance space is can be enunciated quite convincingly on the basis of the intellectual collisions that the era was allotted to deal with. thus, as a re-generator of classical culture, the renaissance had to a degree dug up the finite substructure of ancient thinking; however, as an inheritor of the Middle Ages, it had been requested to square finitism with transcendency. Second, much of what we can today fit under Renaissance space is in fact delivered to us in the artistic form of painting, which means that, in addition to the challenge set by philosophy to the spatial knowledge of the era, there was postulated as well a mediatory agency of art in the realization and conveyance of this new knowledge. Thus we can suppose that the solution offered by Renaissance art to the problem of space on its fictional plane comprised the germ of some modern knowledge about space in reality.
Trames Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2012
The infinite, understood as transcendency, stood in the background of most medieval thinking. Emb... more The infinite, understood as transcendency, stood in the background of most medieval thinking. Embraced in the early Middle Ages by the concept of universal natural symbolism, which organized the reading of the syntax of natura, the infinite posed new epistemic problems for medieval thinking after the re-emergence of Aristotle's natural philosophy, with some of its strongly finitist strings, in 12th century Europe. In fact, the collision of scholastic natural philosophy with supernatural theology, included judiciously in the structure of the medieval university, proved highly fruitful from the perspective of the development of knowledge as such. The effective, as regards the preparation of via moderna, entanglement of Franciscan Platonism and Aristotelianism in the philosophies of John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham is testimony to it. The present article undertakes the task to offer some insights into the way infinity was accommodated in medieval Christian thinking, especially from the point of view of concept formation in culture, and of the interrelations between different cognitive demands of the human mind.
Trames. Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2014
The Renaissance can surely be called a great amalgam of diverse historical, cultural and philosop... more The Renaissance can surely be called a great amalgam of diverse historical, cultural and philosophical impulses. Its outwardly impressive traits hide a pedigree of a confused and enigmatic nature that had combined the bulk of Christian, ancient and medieval motifs in their mutual interaction. The marks of the Renaissance are therefore ambiguous, allowing for explanations from differing or even contradictory positions. Focusing on German Dominican thinking of the later medieval period, the present article argues how some characteristics of the Renaissance can be deduced from the background of Albert the Great, Dietrich of Freiberg, and Meister Eckhart, and how they provided material for the symbiotic work in the person of Nicholas of Cusa.
kirj.ee
As part of an expected further investigation into the role of infinity in stimulating contacts am... more As part of an expected further investigation into the role of infinity in stimulating contacts among religion, knowledge, and art in Western culture, the article focuses on the change in the attitude to infinity occurring in Neoplatonism and early Christianity. The overcoming of the so-called disgust with infinity, characterizing the ancient thought, must be linked largely to two factors. First, Christian monotheism provided the means for channelling the monistic (and theological) undercurrent of ancient thought, which had secretly let it drift (in Platonism) towards the positive concept of ápeiron, while retaining simultaneously a wish to offer a rational and dialectically founded explication for the world. The fitting together of these divergent ends-theological and rational-was rendered possible by a second factor, by the specifically Christian, i.e. Trinitarian, concept of God. Assisted by the seminal studies of Pierre Hadot, the present article tries to elucidate the conceptual developments and mutations underlying the emergence of the new understanding of infinity in Christian culture.
oxymora 7, 2022
The rhetoric of culture claims that culture makes sense as a trip from aesthetics to rationality ... more The rhetoric of culture claims that culture makes sense as a trip from aesthetics to rationality to theology. The three legs, obtained through cross sectioning of the route that is conic in its form, determine the three separately homogenous spaces of culture. The question posing to the itinerant is how to traverse the enforced cutting between the sections (on the way from aesthetics to rationality and onward) without losing one’s memory and the merits once gained. How to achieve the personality of knowledge as a scientist? How to integrate rationality with the vectors from the aesthetical and theological sides? What to do with volition that is disposed to act without antecedents, that is, incidentally? The thesis of the present book is that the integrative approach to culture is achievable out of rhetorical stance on it and can be explicated on the basis of distribution of infinity in culture.