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Today's episode will be an interview about Michael Sellos with Dominic O'Mara, who is

Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Freiburg in Switzerland.

Hi Dominic, thanks for coming back on the podcast.

Hi Peter.

I'm going to start with a quote from Salos, which is the following. I alone practice philosophy in unphilosophical times.

What did he mean by that and was what he was trying to convey a fair assessment of the context in which he was working?

Yes, we need to talk a little bit about what he means by doing philosopher or being a philosopher and also what he means by unphilosophical times.

I think by unphilosophical times he means the circumstances in which he lives, which are

unfavourable to philosophy. He obviously thinks that he lives in a society which, so to speak, does not leave much room for philosophy.

But nevertheless, in these circumstances he tries to practice philosophy.

But what is this philosophy that he practices and why are his times unphilosophical? He has a concept of philosophy which we need to think

about a little bit because it's not really ours. Philosophy for Pseos is a very wide-ranging concept and my good friend John Duffy has

identified it with Polymatia knowing many things.

As if for Pcellos to do philosophy, to be a philosopher is to know many things, It seems to be the reverse of what Heraclitus says when he

denounces somebody who knows many things but doesn't understand anything. But for Pselos, knowing many things seems to be characteristic of philosophy.

And if you look at how he articulates philosophy, you see that it comprises a whole series of sciences. There's metaphysics, there's mathematics,

there's physics, there's what we might call psychology, ethics, politics, and even goes into things like judicial science, legislation and rhetoric.

Philosophy seems to be almost the same thing as knowing everything.

And Salas wrote for his imperial pupil, a little handbook called the Omnifaria Doctrina, which sort of means all sorts of knowledge. And in this little handbook he has little chapters on practically everything you need to know about metaphysical principles, Christian principles, soul body, the world, earthquakes,

hailstones and free will and evil and so on.

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