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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: H.P. Lovecraft

The world before and after us

18 Sunday Oct 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in French Tradition, God, Metaphysics, Natural Science

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

George Berkeley, H.P. Lovecraft, ibn Sīnā, Immanuel Kant, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Quentin Meillassoux, Speculative Realism

Over the past several years I have moved steadily away from any views that see value at the heart of reality, especially natural reality – views that often lead one to some sort of God as the author of these values. I haven’t yet mentioned a recent book that helped crystallize these atheist-ish thoughts for me. That is After Finitude by Quentin Meillassoux (may-ah-SOO) – a book that basically kickstarted the Speculative Realist movement.

Continue reading →

Ten years of Love of All Wisdom

01 Saturday Jun 2019

Posted by Amod Lele in Buddhism, God, Human Nature, M.T.S.R., Meditation, Metaphilosophy, Practice, Prayer, Reading and Recitation, Rites, Unconscious Mind

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

Aaron Stalnaker, Alasdair MacIntyre, architecture, Aristotle, ascent/descent, autobiography, chastened intellectualism, H.P. Lovecraft, identity, Ken Wilber, Mañjuśrī, Plato, Vasudha Narayanan

I opened Love of All Wisdom to the public, with three first posts, on 1 June 2009. That was ten years ago today.

In the span of the history of philosophy, ten years is the blink of an eye. In the span of the blogosphere, however, ten years is an eternity. A lot happens in that time. Ten years ago, Instagram, Snapchat and Lyft did not exist; Uber, Airbnb, the Chrome browser and the Android operating system were less than a year old. Continue reading →

Why give Cthulhu a happy ending?

03 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by Amod Lele in Aesthetics, Biology, Christianity, God, Metaphysics, Natural Science

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

AAR, Charles Darwin, conferences, David McConeghy, Friedrich Nietzsche, H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R. Tolkien, kitsch, Mike Mignola, skholiast (blogger), Speculative Realism, theodicy

A few years ago, Skholiast wrote a lovely post on the philosophical significance of J.R.R. Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft, two early 20th-century writers who shaped the genres we now call fantasy and horror, respectively. I was reminded of it this year at an enjoyable AAR panel entitled “Cthulhu’s Many Tentacles”.

Cthulhu Cthulhu, of course, is the best-known character (if that is the word) from Lovecraft’s stories, enough that the fictional pantheon he created has become known as the “Cthulhu Mythos”. Cthulhu is one of a set of “Elder Gods”: horrifying, vaguely amorphous, often tentacled monstrosities that have lain dormant for millennia and will soon devour humanity; their horror is such that the mere knowledge of them could drive one mad. The AAR panel gave recognition to many aspects of Lovecraft’s work: starting with a presentation on the man and his work itself, the presenters proceeded to examine the varied dimensions of the fandom that has grown up around Lovecraft (noting, in particular, that fan creativity has been greatly enabled by Lovecraft’s work rising into the public domain).

The most interesting point I took away from the panel came from a talk by David McConeghy (who also, coincidentally, was the respondent to my paper on teaching with technology). McConeghy noted that while a great deal of modern speculative fiction (he cited Mike Mignola’s comic-book series Hellboy) is clearly inspired by Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos and makes references to it, these works also typically have happy endings. Continue reading →

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