Dada

European nihilistic post-World War I avant-garde art movement, which sought to reduce all the arts to absurdity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dagon

"Dagon, the name means "corn", is an ancient Mesopotamian vegetation god, father of Baal in his father's attributes. He is the god of crop fertility and the inventor of the plough. He passed this knowledge to mankind to let them better till the soil and produce food. Dagon's temples were in Philistine for about 2000 years, although Baal took over in most parts of the Middle East. Dagon is one of the really old gods. The Ras Shamra texts describe Dagon as coeval with El, who is the most ancient and senior of all the Semitic gods. Dagon's temple at Ashdod still existed right up until the time of the Hasmoneans [who ruled parts of Palestine in Jesus' days]. Dagon was portrayed half man and half fish" [Encyclopedia Mythica].

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daimon

The English word "demon" derives from this Greek word, which named a kind of intermediary being who connected a person and the gods. For Heraclitus, enigmatically, "Man's character is his daimon."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Danaids

"The fifty daughters of Danaus. He fled with his daughters in fear of his twin brother Aegyptus, but the fifty sons of Aegyptos followed them to Argos and forced Danaus to give them his daughters in marriage. At their father's behest they murdered their husbands at their wedding night. The only one who spared her husband was Hypermnestra. In Hades, the girls were condemned eternally to pour water in a vessel with holes in its bottom" [Encyclopedia Mythica].

 

 

 

 

 

 

Darwin on Man

Book, subtitled "A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity," by Howard E. Gruber, which offers a case-study assessment of Darwin's creative process.

 

 

 

 

 

 

De Anima

Treatise "on the soul" by the Greek philosopher Aristotle.

"And there is an intellect which is of this kind by becoming all things, and there is another which is so by producing all things. . . . And this intellect is distinct, unaffected and unmixed, being in essence activity. . . . Actual knowledge is identical with its object. . . . (But we do not remember because this is unaffected, whereas the passive intellect is perishable), and without this thinks nothing" (De Anima, III, 5).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Death of God Theology

1960s theological movement, primarily Protestant and American, led by Altizer and inspired by the writings of Nietzsche and Bonhoeffer, which attempted to develop a theology based on the presupposition of God's absence or death.

 

 

 

 

 

 

deconstruction

A post-structuralist critical method, pioneered by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, which argues for the impossibility of meaning in human communication.

 

 

 

 

 

 

deep structure

Noam Chomsky's hypothetical "black box" generative source of the ability to generate language exisiting a priori in human beings as part of our heredity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

deism

Enlightenment religious stance which held that God is a "divine watchmaker" who made the universe but then set it going by its own laws without his micromanagement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

dejecta membra

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Delphic Oracle

According to Microsoft Encarta, Delphi was a "town of ancient Greece, site of a celebrated oracle of the god Apollo, situated on the slope of Mount Parnassus, in Phocis (now Fokís Department), about 9.5 km (about 6 mi) inland from the Gulf of Corinth. Considered by the ancient Greeks to be the center of the earth, Delphi was once the site of an oracle of the earth goddess Gaea. According to mythology, Apollo defeated the monstrous serpent Python, which guarded Gaea, and expelled her from the sanctuary, which he then shared with the god Dionysus. The Delphic priests developed an elaborate ritual, centered on a chief priestess called Pythia. Her utterances were regarded as the words of Apollo, and the oracle was consulted by private citizens and public officials alike."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Demeter

The Greek goddess of the harvest. The abduction of her daughter Persephone by Hades brought about the seasons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

depth psychology

Used to describe any of the many schools of psychoanalysis tracing their origins to Freud and Jung.

 

 

 

 

 

 

descriptive grammar

In linguistics, attention to the superficial, surface features of a language, without an investigation of the underlying production rules which goven it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diagram of the Logos

A schematic rendering of Barfield's metaphysics at the time of the Great War

 

 

 

 

 

 

dialectical

In philosophy, reasoning which seeks to reach truth through a process of thesis (the presentation of a proposition), antithesis (a correction of the original proposition), and synthesis (a new proposition which refines the original proposition in light of the corrective).

 

 

 

 

 

 

difference

Derrida's, term, based on Sassure's linguistic theory, for the small differences between phonemes and morphemes that often determine the meaning/significance of a word or words.

 

 

 

 

 

 

ding an sich

Literally, "thing in itself": in Kant's philosophy names the perhaps unattainable reality of any existent apart from the percepts and concepts applied to it by a perceiver.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dionysus

The Greek god of wine and vegetation, a son of Zeus; tragedy began as a ritualistic celebration of him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Discarded Image

C. S. Lewis' posthumously published (1964) "Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature."

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Divine Comedy

Long narrative poem, comprised of three books, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradisio, written between 1310 and 1314 by Dante.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don Juan

Legendary Spanish libertine, whose story was reimagined in a long poem by Lord Byron.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Doors of Perception

William Blake's phrase (in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell):

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite.

Aldous Huxley used the phrase as the title of his book on psychedelic drugs.

 

 

 

dualism

Any philosophical stance (for example Cartesianism) which holds that reality is composed of two different substances or principles (often matter and spirit).