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What is reality? Most people in the modern world are ignorant of metaphysical realities, not to mention the prevalence of semantic confusion, and therefore Wynand de Beer aims to counter this ignorance and confusion. He employs numerous insights from classical Greek philosophy and traditional Christian theology in order to discuss the various levels of reality, ranging from the highest (the divine) to the lowest (the material). The author then deals with a range of philosophical and theological themes in the light of the preceding discussion. These include well-being and love, time and eternity, good and evil, truth and knowledge, and the survival of the soul beyond bodily death, which is the only kind of immortality that human beings may attain. A lengthy chapter also deals with the manifestation of higher levels of consciousness in religion, mathematics, and music. In the later chapters of the book, the author subjects salient aspects of the Western sociocultural phenomenon known as "political correctness" to critical scrutiny. In the process, these ideologically driven and media-promoted "isms" are contrasted with both Hellenic and Christian thought, and the penetrating writings of traditionalist and/or anti-modernist thinkers from different parts of the world.
Wynand de Beer is a South African who taught in Cape Town until he moved to Ireland, where he completed his master's dissertation on the philosophy of Eriugena. This was followed by doctoral research in Hellenic philosophy and evolutionary theory, on which his book From Logos to Bios (2018) is based. His research articles on Hellenic philosophy and Patristic theology have been published in various peer-reviewed journals in the United States and South Africa.
"For readers disenchanted with the zeitgeist, this treatise comes as a breath of fresh air. We are delivered from its grip by what may indeed be the only effective means: a living encounter, namely, with the perennial wisdom of mankind. Clearly a connoisseur of the sapiential traditions, De Beer moves easily from Plato and Plotinus to the Vedanta and the sages of Christianity, to restore for us the dimension of verticality, obscured since the Enlightenment."
--Wolfgang Smith, author of The Wisdom of Ancient Cosmology and Cosmos & Transcendence
"Not only does Wynand de Beer's Reality offer an extremely competent and illuminating inquiry into metaphysics--the study of the reality of being--but he skillfully blends an accurate and thought-provoking summary of the main texts with in-depth analysis and fair-minded and often penetrating criticism of the theories he discusses. The book is clearly and engagingly written from beginning to end. Surely a remarkable achievement."
--Nicolas Laos, author of Methexiology and The Metaphysics of World Order
"One of the greatest theoretical and practical challenges faced today is to respond to our nihilistic age by means of an appeal to the metaphysical tradition. Only by taking a step back into tradition can we move forward. Wynand de Beer accepts this challenge with great clarity, courage, and intellectual depth. Not only does he present the metaphysical tradition in an astonishingly profound way, his metapolitical engagement with global liberalism is of the highest order. De Beer's book is a daring and necessary enterprise, a more than welcome achievement."
--Danie Goosen, author of Die Nihilisme [Nihilism] and Oor Gemeenskap en Plek [On Community and Place]
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