Essays - Metin Bobaroğlu

Utopia

2020-11-08T22:32:43+03:00By Metin Bobaroğlu|Categories: Essays|Tags: Al-Farabi, Aldous Huxley, Ancient Greek, Aristotle, Christianity, European culture, Immanuel Kant, Jesus Christ, Karl Marx, Myths, Nietzsche, philosophy, poetry, Thomas More, Tommaso Campanella, utopia|

Philosophy in ancient Greece acquired a systematic unity with Aristotle. A logical method was adopted to unite different disciplines. With Aristotle, philosophy gained a rational narrative through prose with logical and substantive consistency. Philosophers prior to Aristotle, pre-Socratics in particular, expressed philosophy in the form of poetry. Aristotle’s philosophy was a philosophy of solid objects; it carried the status of spatial objects “here and now” to rational concept by way of the union between their substantial and accidental qualities. In ancient Greece, the perception of time was rhythmic; past and future tenses were not used to express reality. The Ancient [...]

About Art

2020-11-08T19:41:15+03:00By Metin Bobaroğlu|Categories: Essays|Tags: art, Classical art, Duchamp, enlightenment, Hegel, Kemal Atatürk, Modern art, modernity, Ortega, philosophy, poetry, Romantic art, Socrates, Symbolic art, Tarkovsky, Umberto Eco|

Modern civilization is built on four foundations: Sports, Science, Art, and Philosophy. Sports deals with the discipline of movement, Science with concepts and terminology specific to science, Art with images, and Philosophy with concepts. Artistic endeavor has existed in all cultures since the earliest periods in history, but art gained self-consciousness in Ancient Greece. This was no accident because Ancient Greece was also where people gained consciousness of philosophy, or of their own thoughts. Andrey Tarkovski “Art emerges and develops where there is a yearning for the ideal,” says A. Tarkovsky, and adds, “Art is a symbol of this [...]

Art

2020-11-08T19:26:14+03:00By Metin Bobaroğlu|Categories: Essays|Tags: aesthetic, art, common essence, consciousness, Socrates, sophia, Tarkovsky, temple of humanity, uniqueness, wisdom|

“Art emerges and develops where there is a yearning for the ideal,” says A. Tarkovsky, and adds, “Art is a symbol of this world that is intertwined with the spiritual reality hidden from us by a utilitarian practice.” Even though the idea is a highly controversial concept, the idea in terms of art represents, at its most basic, “unity” and “integrity.” It expresses the “common essence” or “common form” that holds what is different together. The work of art is at one with its essence; it is unique and original. Artistic endeavor is found in all cultures, from the earliest periods [...]

The Problem of Akhlaq in Sufism

2021-02-15T03:35:08+03:00By Metin Bobaroğlu|Categories: Essays|Tags: akhlaq, God, Hermes Thoth, Holy Quran, Love, Morality, Prophet Jesus, religion, Spiritual purification, Sufi Ibn Arabi, sufism, wisdom|

“Religion is morality in practice. Knowledge is but an instrument.” Lütfi Filiz Any treatise on akhlaq (morality/character) and Sufism (Tasawwuf) needs to make references to specialized literature and a set of concepts. The concepts of Sufism have both a philosophical and a poetic character, meaning that philosophical concepts alone would not be sufficient to explain Sufism. If philosophical concepts are like “day and night” to the mind, and mystic concepts are like “light and dark”, then Sufi concepts are like “dawn and twilight”, in that the language of Sufism contains both concepts and symbols. It addresses both aql (reason) and [...]

Reason, Conscience and Courage in Civilization

2020-10-01T15:34:48+03:00By Metin Bobaroğlu|Categories: Essays|Tags: Civilization, Conscience, Courage, Eastern civilization, Greek civilization, Hebrew culture, Hermes Thoth, Pax Romana, Torah, Western civilization, wisdom|

There are two basic worldviews, two languages in the world: one is the language of the Eastern civilization with Sanskrit roots, and the other is the language of the Western civilization with Ancient Egyptian roots. Further divisions are within these two basic worldviews. The term Indo-European languages points both to the connections between the two civilizations due to Alexander’s conquests and the Silk Road, and the differences between them. Egypt had a Hermetic-esoteric and closed system that revealed knowledge, attitudes, states, and experiences to its students and followers only, through initiation, but concealed it from the outside. We can assume [...]

A “Stranger” on Earth

2020-10-01T15:27:25+03:00By Metin Bobaroğlu|Categories: Essays|Tags: existentialist competition, French Revolution, humanist, nihilism, Political economy, positivist, sufism, Sword of Damocles, tasawwuf, Viktor E. Frankl, wisdom|

“Through painful toil you will eat food from the ground all the days of your life.” Genesis 3:17 The “identity crisis” that emerged after the two world wars left people uncertain about how to define themselves, what to believe in and what to hope for. Neither the institution of religion, nor the state authorities had been able to protect humanity from these disasters. Following the French Revolution, in particular, “nation-state” organizations and “humanist” and “positivist” approaches to education were adopted throughout the world. This was the new way of existence for societies, and the rally cry of this new [...]

Philosophy

2020-07-16T00:40:06+03:00By Metin Bobaroğlu|Categories: Essays|Tags: Aristotle, Bacchus, enlightenment, Epicurus, logic, philos, philosophy, Plato, Pythagoras, Socrates, sophist, sufism, thinkers, wisdom|

From Plato to this day, what leads people to philosophize is that they view themselves as in-between. People are stranded between nature that surrounds them and infinity (God) that transcends them. Ever since Plato and Aristotle, this in-betweenness has always been an object of wonder and curiosity. This curiosity is about objects, facts, events, and the riddle of the universe, but it is also felt regarding the inner world of humans. All attempts to provide solutions throughout the history of philosophy, whether positive or negative, have aimed to comprehend this state of in-betweenness. Many philosophical arguments have been put [...]

Eastern and Western Aesthetics

2020-07-16T00:32:22+03:00By Metin Bobaroğlu|Categories: Essays|Tags: academism, Aesthetics, al-asma al-husna, Allah, Anatolia, Ancient Eastern, artistic creation, beauty, determinism, Eastern and Western, God is beautiful, Greco-Roman, Quran, science of beauty, science of emotions, science of sensations, Western societies|

Aesthetics is a philosophical discipline, and its subject matter is art, or more accurately, fine art. The word aesthetics is derived from the Greek word for “science of sensations” or “science of emotions”, although this definition fails to do full justice to the concept of aesthetics, as aesthetics today is also used to refer to the “philosophy of art” or the “philosophy of fine art”. Aesthetics is the science of beauty, investigating the essence of art and laws of evolution, but also various manifestations of beauty. Aesthetics cannot be reduced to an examination of the sensory pleasure derived from [...]

The Problem of Communication

2020-07-16T00:36:54+03:00By Metin Bobaroğlu|Categories: Essays|Tags: alienation, art, Communication, consciousness, Existence, globalization, Language, Love, peace, philosophy, religion, spirituality, spiritualization, wisdom|

As is well known, communication is a relationship in which messages are conveyed between two sources. If the messages flow only in one direction, no communication takes place. Feedback is a must for communication. Today, the word “communication” has mostly technological connotations. When we hear the word communication, we think of radio, television, newspapers, phones, computers, the Internet, and the like, and this technological dimension means that information can today flow between countries, nations and individuals in an unrestrained way, crossing borders freely. Communication provides the infrastructure for interaction, but is commonly used in a sense that covers interaction [...]

The Problem of Culture

2020-07-16T00:22:03+03:00By Metin Bobaroğlu|Categories: Essays|Tags: Anatolia, Central Asian, Civilization, coexistence, Culture, Gnostics, Mother Cybele, mystics, Noah, Saints of Khorasan, solving problems, subconscious memory, Values, Zoroaster|

Solving problems first requires them to be understood. Culture is a phenomenon that encompasses lifestyles and relationships. People form their cultural worlds by changing and transforming the inputs from nature through their feelings, thoughts, and actions. Cultural objects acquire a completely new existence with the human essence and form added to their natural essence and form. The human hand leaves a mark on every object it touches, and so every cultural object is like a reflective device, a mirror; and the imagination, thought and purpose it manifests turns it into a different object. The most salient feature of culture [...]