First published in 1940, this is a classic work by one of the most well-regarded archaeological scholars. European archaeology had made remarkable progress in the early twentieth century and this volume offers a clear impression of the understanding of European prehistory as a whole. Broken into six topics with additional prologue and epilogue, the text traces out the early foundations of human culture in Europe, covering the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Ages, as well as offering specific focuses on trade routes, and migration and conflict.
Methexiology is not a particular theory, but rather a general philosophical orientation. Therefore, in Methexiology: Philosophical Theology and Theological Philosophy for the Deification of Humanity, Nicolas Laos elucidates the significance of methexiology for the study of ontology, epistemology, ethics, philosophical psychology, theory of justice, philosophy of history, and philosophy of religion. Laos argues that, faced with the modern and the postmodern crises of meaning, we need a new myth, a new spiritual formula, for the resacralization of humanity and the cosmos, without restoring defunct totems, without using tales as "cheap" substitutes for the lack of a life-giving myth, and without negating history. In his Methexiology, Laos studies the "genealogy" of the modern and the postmodern crises of meaning, and, based on his new interpretation of classical Greek philosophy and Hesychasm, proposes methexiology as a way of overcoming the crises of meaning and as a way of resacralizing humanity and the cosmos through a new metaphysically grounded humanism.
This book articulates a new research program, called “Ur-Illuminism,” which consists in an integrated and systematic study of humanity’s quest for “illumination,” namely, for the highest and noblest possible mode of being. Thus, it takes on the challenge of revising widely accepted ways of understanding and interpreting the ontological underpinnings of civilization and the ontological potential of humanity. It allows the reader to delve into a creative “rediscovery” of Platonism, medieval Christian mystics’ and scholars’ writings, and various “illuminist” systems, from the Orphic mystical cult to the European Enlightenment and thence to the eighteenth-century Illuminati fraternities and beyond. Moreover, the book studies major issues in the history of philosophy, politology, and esoteric systems (such as Hermeticism, the Kabbalah, alchemy, the Rosicrucian movement, Freemasonry, and the Bavarian Illuminati). It maintains that a postmodern “rediscovery” of premodern metaphysics, specifically, a postmodern esoteric theocracy (as distinct from old sacerdotalism and religious formalism), is the best bulwark against oppression and the ontological degradation of humanity, as well as the best path to the attainment of that wisdom and spiritual self-knowledge which constitute the existential integration and completion of the human being. In this context, it proposes a peculiar and intellectually fecund synthesis between Tory Anarchism, Libertarianism, Platonism, and Byzantine Hesychasm, as they are elucidated here.
