Modern Occultism & New Age Thought

To get a sense of the historical context for the emergence of critical theory, it may be useful to return to the very origins of philosophy, or at any rate to the structures of philosophical discourse. McKeon cites Plato's utter dependence on the form and method of the dialogue, "suited to carry out all three tasks of philosophy simultaneously--the discovery of truth, the construction of arguments, and the clarification of minds" (McKeon 27). The tradition of rational (= logical, systematic) discourse has persisted through the whole of Western philosophy and theology to this extent, that questions of truth inform logical and epistemological debate, questions of reality or being inform metaphysical, ontological, and cosmological debate, and questions of value inform the axiological and ethical debate. According to Marcuse, the rationalist philosophical tradition culminated with Hegel, whose life and work coincided with the more culturally general and decisive

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t the edge of the postmodern abyss. From the postmodern/semiological standpoint, Freudian theory comes close to exhausting itself in explanation and systematization. The postmodern/semiotic critical attitude is that subjective experience implies and aggravates, more than explains, social-cultural dislocation. Signs, signals, and symbols may be psychological, physical, or aesthetic. What semiotics or postmodern critical theory responds to and interprets are signals the environment gives off, as well as objectives of the culture or actors within it that the manifest signals may seek to accomplish. What the manifest sign implies = what the sign means. The sign, according to Williamson, "consists of the Signifier, the material object, and the Signified, which is its meaning. . . . [A] sign is always thing-plus meaning" (Williamson 17). The theoretical focus of semiotics is on exposing and interpreting the core truth or meaning of what is communicated, whether that truth or meaning be directly articulated or not (Winner and Winner 102ff). Indeed, the artifacts and ideas of culture are open to critique precisely because their meaning, import, and truth (or perhaps a subversion of truth) are conveyed by indirection. Symbols, which are ma
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 5828
Approximate Pages = 23 (250 words per page)

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