AstroDataBlog: Philosopher

Showing posts with label Philosopher. Show all posts

Thursday, 12 May 2016

Alain Leroy Locke, 1885-1954 (American writer, philosopher, educator, patron of the arts)

* Distinguished as the first African American Rhodes Scholar in 1907, Alain Leroy Locke was the philosophical architect —the acknowledged "Dean"— of the Harlem Renaissance. As a result, popular listings of influential African-Americans have repeatedly included him. On 19 March 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaimed: "We're going to let our children know that the only philosophers that lived were not Plato and Aristotle, but W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke came through the universe."

Locke was gay, and may have encouraged and supported other gay African-Americans who were part of the Harlem Renaissance. However, he was not fully public in his orientation and referred to it as his point of "vulnerable/invulnerability", taken to mean an area of risk and strength in his view.

After his retirement from Howard University in 1953, Locke moved to New York City. He suffered from heart disease, and after a six-week illness died at Mount Sinai Hospital on 9 June 1954.

NATAL DATA and ASTROLOGY CHART

BIRTH DATA: 13 September 1885, about 10:30 (10:30 AM) LMT (+5:00:39), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (39n57, 75w09). ASC: About 17 Scorpio. RR: B (from auto/biography). SOURCE: Sy Scholfield quotes from Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy by Christopher Buck (Kalimat, 2005), p. 12: "In the Alain Locke Papers, there is a note in Locke's handwriting that reads: 'Alain Leroy Locke--Alan registered as Arthur (white) Phila Vital Statistics owing prejudice of Quaker physician Isaac Smedley to answering question of race. [B]orn 13 So. 19th Street, Philadelphia, Pa. Sunday between 10 and 11 A.M. September 13, 1885. Called Roy as a child[,] Alain from 16 on. [illegible] First born son. 2nd brother born 1889—lived 2 months. Named Arthur first selected for me.' A city hall note by the chief clerk of the Philadelphia Department of Public Health and Charities (1909?) confirms 1885 as the year of his birth."

Thursday, 5 November 2015

Pavel Florensky, 1882-1937 (Russian Orthodox theologian)

* Pavel Florensky was a man of many talents: a Russian Orthodox theologian, priest, philosopher, mathematician, physicist, electrical engineer, inventor and Neomartyr.

In Moscow, on 26 February 1933, he was arrested on suspicion of engaging in a conspiracy to overthrow the state and restore with Nazi assistance a fascist monarchy. He defended himself vigorously against the imputations but was sentenced to ten years in the Labor Camps by the infamous Article 58 of Joseph Stalin's criminal code (clauses ten and eleven: "agitation against the Soviet system" and "publishing agitation materials against the Soviet system"). The published agitation materials were his monograph about the theory of relativity. His manner of continuing to wear priestly garb annoyed his employers. The state offered him numerous opportunities to go into exile in Paris, but he declined them.

He was imprisoned and eventually shot dead in St. Petersburg on the night of 8 December 1937 in a wood not far from the city.

NATAL DATA and ASTROLOGY CHART

BIRTH DATA: Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky, 9 January 1882 OS, 19:00 (7pm) (-3.19), Yevlakh, Azerbaijan (40n37, 47e09). ASC: 23 Leo. RR: B (from autobiography). SOURCE: Sy Scholfield quotes him in "Souvenirs d'une enfance au Caucase" by Paul Florensky (L'AGE D'HOMME, 2007), p. 16: "Evlakh ... C'est donc là, en pleine steppe sauvage, que je suis né le 9 janvier 1882, le soir, vers sept heures, une heure que j'aime entre toutes."

Translation: Evlakh ... It was here, on the wild steppe, that I was born on 9 January 1882 in the evening about seven o'clock, the hour of the day that I love most of all.

Wednesday, 5 June 2013

Hélène Cixous (French feminist writer)

* Hélène Cixous turns 76 today (5 June 2013). Considered "one of the mothers of poststructuralist feminist theory," she has the Moon in the philosophical Sagittarian decan of Aries ruling her maternal/feminist Cancer Ascendant.

Hélène Cixous (born 5 June 1937) is a professor, French feminist writer, poet, playwright, philosopher, literary critic and rhetorician. She holds honorary degrees from Queen's University and the University of Alberta in Canada; University College Dublin in Ireland; the University of York and University College London in the UK; and Georgetown University, Northwestern University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the USA. In 2008 she was appointed as A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University until June 2014.

She has published widely, including twenty-three volumes of poems, six books of essays, five plays, and numerous influential articles.

Along with Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva, Cixous is considered one of the mothers of poststructuralist feminist theory. In the 1970s, Cixous began writing about the relationship between sexuality and language. Like other poststructuralist feminist theorists, Cixous believes that our sexuality is directly tied to how we communicate in society. In 1975, Cixous published her most influential article "Le rire de la méduse" ("The Laugh of the Medusa"), translated and released in English in 1976. She has published over 70 works; her fiction, dramatic writing and poetry, however, are not often read in English.