Hello There, I’m Johnathan
Raised between Beijing and Vancouver, I spent the majority of my formative years training in mathematics, eventually competing in the Canadian Olympiad. I went on to study Philosophy and Computer Science at Columbia during which my curiosity dragged me towards AI coursework, VR Research, continental philosophy, and Buddhist monasteries. Now, I’m on the founding team of Opto Investments.
Welcome to Limbo
Here you will encounter, lurking around every corner, my three main interests:
Contemplation: I was trained in continental philosophy with a focus on recognition theory. My primary interest are thinkers who focus on the social side of human nature: Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Hume, Hegel, Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Girard. Specifically, I’m interested in the relationship between sociality and rationality: the compatibility of the contemplative and active life, the social preconditions of truth, and the role of mimesis in normative judgements and religious faith.
Meditation: I have practiced in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, attended multiple retreats, and briefly flirted with the idea of becoming a monastic. Alas, the world still entices me too much at this current moment … although, I have a nagging suspicion that philosophy will eventually instruct me to abandon philosophy and turn to meditation as the final pursuit.
Action: The more I engage in active life, the more I think it to be incompatible with the contemplative and meditative lives. Furthermore, I find my motivations for engaging with the former to be more base. As a mere stage in life, I consider entering into the “real world” necessary; I’m suspicious that it is also a worthy destination. Perhaps I’ve internalized Dante’s critique of Odysseus: wandering forms character, but one can wander too far.
I keep track of good books I come across on my Reading List. For the ones I find myself repeatedly crawling back to, I take notes, the most detailed of which are: Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, The Uses and Abuses of History for Life, Democracy in America, and Battling to the End.
When I was 20, I began writing on the intersection of Girardian social theory and Buddhist phenomenology in response to personal suffering. The process of writing helped me re-orient my life and intimately involved all three of these interests. It quickly ballooned into a book-length work that I happily (as it had fulfilled its purpose) abandoned two years later. You can read the unfinished manuscript here.
For a more accessible and comprehensive introduction to Girard, take a look at my lecture series on Mimetic theory. Here is episode 1 of 7:
…
My kindly master then began by saying:
“Look well at him who holds that sword in hand,
who moves before the other three as lord.
That shade is Homer, the consummate poet;
the other one is Horace, satirist;
the third is Ovid, and the last is Lucan.
Because each of these spirits shares with me
the name called out before by the lone voice,
they welcome me—and, doing that, do well.”
And so I saw that splendid school assembled,
led by the lord of song incomparable,
who like an eagle soars above the rest.
Soon after they had talked a while together,
they turned to me, saluting cordially;
and having witnessed this, my master smiled;
and even greater honor then was mine,
for they invited me to join their ranks—
I was the sixth among such intellects.
So did we move along and toward the light,
talking of things about which silence here
is just as seemly as our speech was there.
We reached the base of an exalted castle,
encircled seven times by towering walls,
defended all around by a fair stream.
We forded this as if upon hard ground;
I entered seven portals with these sages;
we reached a meadow of green flowering plants.
The people here had eyes both grave and slow;
their features carried great authority;
they spoke infrequently, with gentle voices.
We drew aside to one part of the meadow,
an open place both high and filled with light,
and we could see all those who were assembled.
Facing me there, on the enameled green,
great-hearted souls were shown to me and I
still glory in my having witnessed them.
I saw Electra with her many comrades,
among whom I knew Hector and Aeneas,
and Caesar, in his armor, falcon-eyed.
I saw Camilla and Penthesilea
and, on the other side, saw King Latinus,
who sat beside Lavinia, his daughter.
I saw that Brutus who drove Tarquin out,
Lucretia, Julia, Marcia, and Cornelia,
and, solitary, set apart, Saladin.
When I had raised my eyes a little higher,
I saw the master of the men who know,
seated in philosophic family.
There all look up to him, all do him honor:
there I beheld both Socrates and Plato,
closest to him, in front of all the rest;
Democritus, who ascribes the world to chance,
Diogenes, Empedocles, and Zeno,
and Thales, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus;
I saw the good collector of medicinals,
I mean Dioscorides; and I saw Orpheus,
and Tully, Linus, moral Seneca;
and Euclid the geometer, and Ptolemy,
Hippocrates and Galen, Avicenna,
Averroës, of the great Commentary.
I cannot here describe them all in full;
my ample theme impels me onward so:
what’s told is often less than the event.
The company of six divides in two;
my knowing guide leads me another way,
beyond the quiet, into trembling air.
And I have reached a part where no thing gleams.
— Canto IV, The Inferno
Canto 3: Dante and Virgil at the Entrance to Hell ‐ Oil ‐ AlumaComp ‐ 60 x 48 x .1
Canto 4: Dante and Virgil Visit the Great Poets of Antiquity in Limbo ‐ Oil ‐ AlumaComp ‐ 60 x 48 x .1
By Eric Armusik: https://www.ericarmusik.com/