Essays - Metin Bobaroğlu

Let Us Get to Know One Another

2020-07-16T00:05:14+03:00By Metin Bobaroğlu|Categories: Essays|Tags: Allah, Anatolia, Christianity, Civilization, Exodus, Far Eastern, Greco-Roman, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Quran, Sanskrit, sufism, symbols, temple, The Messiah, Western civilization|

“Let us get to know one another, for it makes things easier; let us stop being strangers, let us love and be loved; for the world is no one’s to inherit.” Yunus Emre A person of Anatolia can play an active role in the development of a mutual understanding, being situated between the East and the West, and with a deep awareness of both civilizations. The key difference between the civilizations of the East and West is that while the former is “verbal” and “conscientious”, the latter is “visual” and “rational”. Far Eastern and Sanskrit civilizations may also be [...]

People Are Born Thrice

2020-07-16T00:34:35+03:00By Metin Bobaroğlu|Categories: Essays|Tags: consciousness, contemporary societies, cultural setting, dependence on authority, education, enlightenment, positivism, religion, revolutionary, tradition, Understanding|

The first birth is surrounded by the “cultural setting”; the second birth is into “education”, when the person is shaped via pedagogical, psychological and scientific methods; and the third birth is when a person “gives birth to themselves”, referring to time when one can shape one’s own life through one’s own free will. When we are born, we enter the world with nothing but genetic features, abilities and natural tendencies. We start to become shaped by the references of the cultural setting into which we are born. We cannot choose our parents, race, religion, locality or history; in short, [...]

The Problem of Awareness of History and Identity

2020-07-16T00:30:12+03:00By Metin Bobaroğlu|Categories: Essays|Tags: Awareness, Culture, freedom, History, Human, Identity, individuality, Liberation, Love, weaknesses|

Humans are historical beings “in this world.” Their nature, culture, genetic heritage, language, and social existence are historical, and as such they are finite and temporary beings. In other words, humans emerge and exist only for a certain period in the history of the world. Humans are children of nature, but are also children of history or time. The biological aspect of humans represents a possibility. They are equipped with certain capabilities that are to be realized. Humans lack the advanced instincts found in other animals; as instead, nature has equipped us with intelligence. Dealing with life requires the [...]

The Problem of Method

2020-07-17T00:28:22+03:00By Metin Bobaroğlu|Categories: Essays|Tags: Ancient Greece, Concept, enlightenment, know-how, Knowledge, Methodology, methods, philosophy, philosophy of agency|

In its most general usage, “method” refers to the procedure and technique used to carry out a task, to obtain and implement knowledge, and to evaluate results. Method is the term Western civilizations use to refer to such procedures. In Ancient Greece, the word kanon meant “example” and “method”, and was translated from Greek to Arabic as qanun, meaning rules and principles. I. Kant, the famous German thinker from the Enlightenment, defined kanon as “the sum total of the a priori principles of the correct use of certain cognitive faculties in general.” When it comes to method, further questions [...]

The Ethical Human as a Value-Generating Being

2020-07-16T00:19:14+03:00By Metin Bobaroğlu|Categories: Essays|Tags: alienation, Christianity, Civilization, consciousness, education, Ethical Human, ethics of values, Free Will, Hartmann, logic, moral creatures, Muhyiddin İhya, Old Testament, philosophical discipline, Sword of Damocles, unconscious, Value-Generating, Values|

Humans are defined in many different ways, and these definitions carry the marks of various disciplines. Among these, “Humans are value-generating beings” would be a prominent definition in terms of the “discipline of ethics”. Of course, humans cannot be reduced to this, in that they are more than mere value-generating beings, just as they are more than human beings involved in “thought, action, morality, willpower, society, labour”, etc. Every reduction stems from some sort of abstraction, and the different human definitions, as products of abstractions created by various disciplines within their own contexts, simply emphasize one or another aspect [...]

Look At That Word and All That It Does!

2020-07-16T00:12:41+03:00By Metin Bobaroğlu|Categories: Essays|Tags: consciousness, Empiricists, Hamann, Humboldt, Language, philosophy, Plato, rational concepts, self-awareness, Spiritual life|

In their relations with themselves and with their environment, people act consciously, and this consciousness extends both to the environment and to control. This separates people qualitatively from animals, as the closest relations to humans among all natural creatures. Animals are also conscious of their environment, but in a passive manner, while people, on the other hand, are not only conscious of their environment, but are also conscious of themselves. As the only creatures with self-awareness, humans are the sole real subjects in nature. “Animals are directly identical with their own life activity; they cannot distinguish themselves from their [...]

The Problem of Cultural Style and Enlightenment

2020-07-15T23:51:25+03:00By Metin Bobaroğlu|Categories: Essays|Tags: Anatolian cultural, Ancient Egypt, Artistic Vision, ashure, assimilation, authentic styles, Buddhism, Confucius, consciousness, enlightenment, Gautama Buddha, Hermetic teachings, Lao Tzu, Lifestyles, mosaic, objective idealism, Praxis, Reality, symbolic memory|

Culture refers to the totality of human production in its relationship with nature and society, and the way they are used and passed down from generation to generation, and is also an indicator of the common hopes, goals and aspirations of society for the future. The ability of culture to provide a common identity to human communities, to create societies, to serve as a societal memory by forming a connection between generations within the historical process and to provide for the continuity of identities is crucial to the existence of societies. Culture became a feature of human life in [...]