tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post4195894692076910436..comments2024-03-28T12:56:13.118+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: How to conceptualize civilizations? Bruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-34905378846458491472015-03-06T11:48:36.887+00:002015-03-06T11:48:36.887+00:00"the mind of a nation (Athene for instance) i..."the mind of a nation (Athene for instance) is the divine, knowing and willing itself." -- Hegel<br /><br />The spirit of an organic civilization is a pagan deity. This is why the Emperor is divine.<br /><br />I was really surprised to find in Heidegger the best description of a a Shinto shrine:<br /><br />"A building, a Greek temple, portrays nothing. It simply stands there in the middle of the rocky, fissured valley. The building encloses the figure of a god and within this concealment, allows it to stand forth through the columned hall within the holy precinct. Through the temple, the god is present in the temple. This presence of the god is, in itself, the extension and delimitation of the precinct as something holy. The temple and its precinct do not, however, float off into the indefinite. It is the temple work that first structures and simultaneously gathers around itself the unity of those paths and relations in which birth and death, disaster and blessing, victory and disgrace, endurance and decline acquire for the human being the shape of its destiny. The all-governing expanse of these open relations is the world of this historical people. From and within this expanse the people first returns to itself for the completion of its vocation."Heavisidenoreply@blogger.com