By Cynthia Chung Homer’s great poems that are left to us today, The Iliad and The Odyssey, describe the events of the Trojan War and its immediate aftermath, events which marked the descent of Greece into a Dark Age. Following the Trojan War, c.1190 BCE, the civilization of mainland Greece collapsed, written language was lost, and cities disappeared….
Tag: Aesthetical Education
Ode to the Orange Tree
Timeless Conversation Between Two Aristocratic Men Gu Yuan & Guo Moruo By Quan Le This is the occasion for expressing some of my desultory remarks on Chinese culture, history and more generally on epistemology, my core interest. Epistemology has 3 theoretical branches : theory of knowledge, heuristics/maieutics and hermeneutics. Epistemology has one practical application at…
The Poetic Principle in the World of the I Ching: Mankind’s Long Journey to Reason and Beauty
In this lecture Dr. Quan Le focuses on the I Ching, the first Confucian Classic (of five: Yi Jing, Shu Jing, Shi Jing, Chun Qiu and Zhou Li) which magnificently embodies the poetic principle famously outlined by Shelley, centuries later, in his Defense of Poetry which re-asserted that Poets are the true legislators of the world….
For Keats’ 200th Anniversary – Great Odes and the Sublime: Commemorating the Life of John Keats
By Dan Leach When John Keats died in Rome on Feb. 23, 1821, at the age of 25, the world lost one of the greatest poetic geniuses it had ever known, and although much of what would undoubtedly have been his greatest work was unfinished, and as much scattered about in, or only hinted at…
Through Beauty’s Morning-Gate to the Land of Knowledge: RTF Poetry Symposium
“The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from Heaven to Earth, from Earth to Heaven; and as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name; such tricks hath strong imagination.” – William Shakespeare (A…
The Epistemological Lessons of Frank Herbert’s Dune and Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy
Many have read Frank Herbert’s famous series of science fiction books titled ‘Dune’ (or at least watched the film versions of the story) and many have read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. Few have come to recognize the layers of geopolitical and epistemological insights bubbling under the surface of these works. On Wednesday February 1st 2023,…
C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength: A Tale of Transhumanism, the Occult… & Merlin?!
In this third and final lecture unravelling the multifaceted layers of C.S. Lewis’ penetrating mind and playful style contained in his ‘science fiction trilogy’, Rising Tide Foundation President Cynthia Chung tells the tell of ‘That Hideous Strength’ as it has never been told before. In her presentation, Cynthia reviews a tale which serves as a…
How to Conquer Tyranny: A Lesson from Plato
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Plato’s Letter VII Plato to Dion’s associates and friends wishes well-doing. You write to me that I must consider your views the same as those of Dion, and you urge me to aid your cause so far as I can…
Paul Robeson and the Battle for the Soul of America
By Matthew Ehret This essay is an accompaniment to a lecture delivered by the author honoring the life of Paul Robeson as an unfinished symphony “Every artist, every scientist, every writer must decide now where he stands. The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made…
Tragedy, Dialogue, and Politics: Applying Tragedy’s Therapy to Russian Relations with the West
By Professor Nicolai N. Petro When we refer to something as a tragedy, we typically mean that something bad has happened over which we have no control. It is precisely our powerlessness to change these circumstances that we deem “tragic.” For the ancient Greeks, however, tragedy is something that human beings create by virtue of…