Author: Huenemann

If you are looking for some philosophical stimulation, you might check out Salt Lake Community College’s philosophy conference next week, which will focus on Nietzsche’s philosophy. USU’s own Dan Alexander and Alex Tarbet will be presenting on Friday, and I will be presenting on Thursday. The conference will also feature a number of Nietzsche scholars from around the world, as well as a wide range of student presentations. (If you have class on these days, you might try this ploy on your professors: “Don’t you think part of my undergraduate education should involve the exciting give-and-take of discussion with my peers in academic settings?” But if you use this ploy, you damn well better show up!)

Every Thursday evening, from 5 pm onward, at the Bull’s Head Tavern. There are specials on food, and plenty of varied kinds of drinks to consume. Come and have fun philosophizing around the cozy outdoor fireplace!

“In chapter three Maffie introduces the “fundamental premise” of Aztec metaphysics, which he calls inamic agonistic unity. Teotl, Maffie claims, is defined by

the continual and continuous cyclical struggle (agon) of paired opposites, polarities, or dualities. Agonistic inamic unity refers to a brute fact about the nature of teotl and hence a brute fact about the nature of reality per se. . . . Teotl’s ceaseless self-becoming, self-presenting, and self-unfolding, and therefore its ceaseless generating and regenerating of the cosmos, are defined by agonistic inamic unity. (137)

“Night and day, male and female, life and death, warp and weft, wind and fire, wet and dry, flower and flint stone, weakness and strength, order and disorder or being and non-being are just a few of the countless opposites that struggle for dominance. Indeed, all things, processes, forces, powers, influences, or energies-in-motion have an inamic match that they complete, complement, and compete with. More accurately, all things have multiple matches, which indicates one of the ways in which teotl is ineliminably ambiguous. For example, a person is both male (vis-à-vis his wife) and female (vis-à-vis his enemy), both dead and alive, both weak and strong, etc. Importantly, no inamic half ever triumphs over the other, for both opposites are necessary for the existence of the pair. There is no death without life, for instance, even though death and life constantly struggle to dominate each other.”

Read a review of James Maffie’s Aztec Philosophy.

What do you think of this? It’s funny, yes, and bitingly truthful. But what is it to clap and cheer, and go on with one’s job, when such a truth has been stretched out before your eyes?