From Descartes to the present, there has been a call for a new beginning in philosophy. Contemporary continental philosophy and American pragmatism continue to proclaim the end of one philosophic tradition and the beginning of another. The basis for many of these developments is the repudiation of metaphysics. The purpose of this book is to rethink the metaphysical traditions in terms of the continental and pragmatist critiques, rejecting a single view. The major works in the tradition are viewed as heretical. Philosophy has recurrently acknowledged aporia: "moments in the movement of thought in which it finds itself faced with unconquerable obstacles resulting from conflicts in its understanding of its own intelligibility." A chapter is devoted to each of the eight major philosophers and movements in the Western canonical tradition: the pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Leibniz, empiricism, Kant, and Hegel. The last three chapters are devoted to contemporary discussions of the end of metaphysics, including the development of a "local" metaphysics that is able to express its own locality and aporia.

In his book, Heresy & Metaphysics, Borislav Vakinov explores and discusses philosophical, historical, occult, existential, mythological, gnostic and pagan themes and concepts. Thematically, the core of the book deals with pre-Christian, Pagan practices and beliefs, and also delves into Fortean topics such as; the paranormal, chaos magic and "conspiracy theories", which roots and foundations are strongly based in antiquity as well as in more current times. Heresy & Metaphysics rides on the towering wave of probability and high weirdness, and one of the main goals that the author set out to achieve with his book, was to excavate the mystical, the paranormal, the super natural and the occult, and to give it a slightly different perspective; a more down-to-earth snap shot and free of new age or materialist type of dogma, sugar-coated in mainstream language; in other words, the hyper update of the decade! Heresy & Metaphysics taps into archetypes, metaphors and subconscious concepts that hasn't been properly explored for years since the so called "truth movement" began in Europe and North America in the later part of the decade after the events of 9/11. The book fuels the engine of creativity and peels off layer after layer of lies, deceit and fake promises of a better tomorrow, in a world where the mass media, the politicians, (the so-called elites behind the veil), and the global corporations dictate how or whether or not we should have an authentic experience. Whether we should look for answers beyond the five sense reality or express ourselves as human beings. The time has come to embark on a solo magical journey through the fields, forests and suburban dark alleys of our towns and cities, and put on the "wizard" disguise in order to achieve highly concentrated and structured models of improving our lives. With the writing and the publication of Heresy & Metaphysics, Borislav's stongest desire is to take the reader on that lone ship in the middle of the ocean, where the captain strives to pull up the anchor and lift up toward the unknown. In a completely unpretentious and unapologetic way, the book tries to push further ahead into new territories and break the thick blocks of stagnation, while steering the wheel back into familiar grounds and visit old places. At the same time, the main quest of this book is to deliver something deeply weird, practical, entertaining and authentic. Much of Borislav's work concentrates on the world that is ignored by the mainstream and pop culture. Sometimes forgotten, obsolete or simply marginalized, it is a world of the "unseen", "the hidden" and of the "unknown", that doesn't fit into a twenty-second news media bite or a Facebook and Twitter feed. Borislav has spent the last ten years traveling across Europe and his native land documenting this world, and has a story to share. This is his first published book.

"The heresy of heresies was common sense." --George Orwell, 1984. This book is a defense of common-sense realism, which is the greatest heresy of our time. Following common-sense philosophers like Thomas Aquinas, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Dallas Willard, and J. P. Moreland, this book defends a common-sense vision of reality within the Christian tradition. Mosteller shows how common-sense realism is more reasonable than the materialist, idealist, pragmatist, existentialist, and relativist spirits of our age. It maintains that we can know the nature of reality through common-sense experience and that this knowledge has profound implication for living the good life and being a good person.

“The heresy of heresies was common sense.” —George Orwell, 1984. This book is a defense of common-sense realism, which is the greatest heresy of our time. Following common-sense philosophers like Thomas Aquinas, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Dallas Willard, and J. P. Moreland, this book defends a common-sense vision of reality within the Christian tradition. Mosteller shows how common-sense realism is more reasonable than the materialist, idealist, pragmatist, existentialist, and relativist spirits of our age. It maintains that we can know the nature of reality through common-sense experience and that this knowledge has profound implication for living the good life and being a good person.

One of the most exciting names in contemporary French philosophy explores the lessons of heresy to construct a new understanding of "belief."

At the heart of Spinoza's Heresy is a mystery: why was Baruch Spinoza so harshly excommunicated from the Amsterdam Jewish community at the age of twenty-four? In this philosophical sequel to his acclaimed, award-winning biography of the seventeenth-century thinker, Steven Nadler argues that Spinoza's main offence was a denial of the immortality of the soul. But this only deepens the mystery. For there is no specific Jewish dogma regarding immortality: there is nothing that a Jew is required to believe about the soul and the afterlife. It was, however, for various religious, historical and political reasons, simply the wrong issue to pick on in Amsterdam in the 1650s. After considering the nature of the ban, or cherem, as a disciplinary tool in the Sephardic community, and a number of possible explanations for Spinoza's ban, Nadler turns to the variety of traditions in Jewish religious thought on the postmortem fate of a person's soul. This is followed by an examination of Spinoza's own views on the eternity of the mind and the role that that the denial of personal immortality plays in his overall philosophical project. Nadler argues that Spinoza's beliefs were not only an outgrowth of his own metaphysical principles, but also a culmination of an intellectualist trend in Jewish rationalism.

This special issue of Labyrinth is the second part of a diptych dedicated to the eminent French philosopher François Laruelle in honor of his 80th Anniversary. The included essays deal with the Origins of Laruelle's Non-Philosophy in Ravaisson's Understanding of Metaphysics, the question of Religious Pluralism, the non-philosophical mystique and the rehabilitation of heresis, the analogies and differences of Laruelle's non philosophy to Iamblichus or Martin Heidegger. The contributors to this issue are Vincent Le, John M. Allison, Eleni Lorandou, Stanimir Panayotov, Ameen Mettawa, David Bremner, and Yvanka B. Raynova.