Designing a Metaphysical Zone near the Miami River Essay -- Public Pol

A METAPHYSICAL ZONEWe should accept the observational nature of our prototype we can push the design as farther well-nigh as our theories will allow, since whatever we produce may be time-tested by others. Our position within electracy is not unlike that of Plato in literacy, if moreover in the sense of what we be attempting to do (and not what we have achieved). Plato is assign with being the frontmost person in the Western tradition to confiscate and work purely within a conceptual discourse (he invented Philosophy). The first concept to be treated in this fully airlift counselling is justice, and in a dialogue such as THE REPUBLIC Plato discusses what justice is--asks after its essence, its inner nature, its being--as opposed to dramatizing its dispersed qualities in a series of narrative actions, as the tragedians were still doing, not to mention the status of such a thought in the oral epics.When we isolate the Miami River as a zone, we are raising it to the status of an idea, or even of a category. As the Greeks assimilated literacy, the term eidos evolved from its original usage in Homer--what one sees, appearance, shape--to the abstract forms (suprasensible reality, eternal, beyond the merely sensible) (Peters, 46-47). In Platos metaphysics (his theory of what there is in the world, what is real) a set of eide evolved--the Good, the Beautiful, the One. At first there seemed to be an eidos for individually class of things (ethical eide, mathematical eide). Then a hierarchy emerged, with certain terminal forms (Aristotle called them categories) that did not mix among themselves, such as Existence, the Same, the Different, Rest, Motion (49).CommentWhat we are doing is generating an electrate mode of reasoning by means of an extended analogy ... ...rds and meanings most commonly used in such systems ( If you hear a brag cawing on your righthand side, be very cautious in all you do that day). Our consulting works this analogy at two levels f irst, our zone consists of the Miami River and the movements, positions, identity, and cries of its denizens--Haitians, sailing guard, Italian taxi drivers, and the like. Second, the form (shape, eidos) of our practice adapts some of the features of divination precise to the Carribean basin, specifically aspects of Santeria and Vodun ritual. We may also find useful parallels with the notion of the betoken as bird watcher, if we think of our interface metaphor of tourism.WORKS CITEDPeters, F. E., classic PHILOSOPHICAL TERMS A HISTORICAL LEXICON (New York NYU, 1967).Telesco, Patricia, FUTURE TELLING A COMPLETE GUIDE TO DIVINATION (Freedom, CA. Crossing, 1998).